


Darkest Evening of the Year

by SunflowerSales



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety Disorder, Background Relationships, Canon Divergence - Red Wedding, Everyone Has Issues, F/M, House Lannister, House Stark, House Tyrell, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Jon Snow is a Targaryen, Mental Health Issues, POV Alternating, POV Third Person, Prompt Fic, Robb-centric, War Of The Five Kings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-26
Updated: 2014-03-26
Packaged: 2018-01-17 01:31:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 37,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1368976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunflowerSales/pseuds/SunflowerSales
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Robb is a bastard, doesn't know it, and somehow things work out for the better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Darkest Evening of the Year

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt fic for what if Robb was a Snow instead of a Stark and then this thing kind of derailed into something else entirely. 
> 
> Also includes a birthday prompt for a friend with Catelyn being accepting of Jon (it works) and Cersei Lannister being protective of Sansa (I don't know where she got that idea from, but Cersei is one of my favorite characters so not killing her off was nice). 
> 
> Three major changes are kind of a lot, but honestly, I really like the way this turned out. 
> 
> None of the ships are particularly important.

It happens at the end of Robert’s Rebellion when Catelyn is headed to King’s Landing to meet her husband. Some matter of great importance has come up that requires her to leave Winterfell behind along with him for about a month and a half. She thought it strange, but hadn’t questioned, and now wishes that she had because barely a fortnight later and she’s returned. Ned arrives not long after, having pushed himself perhaps too hard to rush, and it’s right at this time she begins to feel emotionally strong enough to leave their room.

He has a baby in his arms, which she thinks under different circumstances would make her angry, but at the sight of her he drops to his knees by the side of the bed where she’s just now sat up. Today marks a full week after she should have bled. “Oh, Cat,” he says, taking hold of her hands, “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there.”

You’re here now, she thinks, because Robert was just declared King and they were raised so close they might as well have been brothers, so he would have kept Ned there longer if he could have. There’s another child right beside them, and she doesn’t care because she was supposed to be with his brother, not with him, but here he is anyway. “I know you came as fast as you could,” she says sincerely and wonders how she’ll explain this to him. “No one should be able to get to the North from King’s Landing this quickly.”

For the first perhaps week, she’d been so exhausted and shocked that she could barely string a sentence together. Ned says, “I shouldn’t have called for you in the first place. I knew it was a mistake, I should have just—”

She takes one hand from his to smooth out a forming line in his forehead. “You didn’t know,” she says, sounding more firm than she feels. “Why, though? Why call for me?”

Then he disconnects their other hands and reaches over to take the little, bundled up child in his arms. “He isn’t mine,” he says. “Lyanna—I found her, right as she had him. By Rhaegar. Robert was mad from grief, wanted all the Targaryens dead. Tywin Lannister had already ordered for even the children to be killed in their sleep—”

“No!”

Like that, she wishes the little boy _was_ his, because her husband’s face is so terribly grave and how could anyone order for something as barbaric as that? They’re children, they’re innocent, they can’t help _who_ they’re related to. Ned continues, as if not interrupted, “My sister, she died in childbirth, but she lived long enough to ask me to protect him. I thought if you could reach King’s Landing before Robert found out, we could pass him off as our legitimate child, but that’s too late now. We’ll have to raise him as a Snow. If Robert ever finds out—well, I don’t think even being mothered by Lyanna will be enough to save him, and harboring him will do little to save us. But I promised.”

A nephew they’re going to raise as a bastard while she—well, it’s almost laughable, when she really thinks about it. And even though he has not been back long, she shouldn’t delay the inevitable. “What’s his name?” she asks.

“Jon,” he answers. “After Jon Arryn. I thought it was…appropriate.”

“Well,” she says and tries not to cry because she hates this but more than that, she hopes he won’t hate her in turn, “then…Jon will have a little brother.”

There’s a moment where Ned doesn’t say anything. Then, “Cat. You’re really—?” She nods, and averts her eyes. “Catelyn, look at me.” When she does, he says, “This wasn’t your choice. I don’t fault you, I don’t care. Does anyone know?”

Shaking her head, she says, “I haven’t even told Maester Luwin,” and wonders if his brother would have reacted this way. “Ned, what if I can’t have any more children after this? I’ve see it happen to other women. You said your nephew needs to be raised as a bastard; we’ll never have an heir now with two—”

“Then we’ll do as I intended with Jon, if you think you can manage,” he interrupts and in that moment, she thinks this might be love. “We’ll raise the child as a Stark. If it’s a boy, we have an heir, if it’s a girl, we legitimatize Jon, or do as Dorne does. These are an lot of secrets, but I’ll do it if you believe you can.”

“Can you really, Ned? At least Jon’s your blood.”

“This wasn’t your choice,” he says again. “I love you, and if you can love this child, then so can I. Whoever fathered it doesn’t matter to me; if I raise it, then the child is mine.”

For the first time since the night _it_ happened, Catelyn feels tears press at the back of her eyes and it’s only seconds before they start to spill over. Jon awakens and blinks at her with sleepy brown eyes as Ned puts him down to gather her into his arms. What did she ever do to deserve someone like this? “I love you,” she says and knows many women live their lives without ever saying those words to their husbands. “And just because Jon isn’t to be raised as mine doesn’t mean I can’t love him, too.”

Ned laughs, though the sound is harsh. “We’ll be the strangest parents in Westeros,” he answers and she has nothing to say in return, but the way he holds her tells her clearly that this is enough.

 

 

“Jon, Robb, what have I told you about wandering off?”

Both little boys look at their feet and Robb inches so he’s ducked behind his older brother. By some miracle, he’s the picture of Catelyn and though Jon looks more Lyanna than Ned, there’s nothing Targaryen about him. Now they’re four and three and he’s never seen two children get themselves into so much mischief before. “We’re sorry,” says Robb from behind Jon, and despite his young age, everyone has done well at instilling heir-worthy manners into him.

“We just wanted to see the godswood,” Jon adds, looking up at him with large brown eyes as if that’s going to change Ned’s opinion. “And ‘sides, Robb was scared of Old Nan’s story of the blue-eyed giant.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“Yes, you were!”

“Boys!” Robb quickly shuts his mouth. No one ever told Ned that parenting was this much _work._ Sansa, who can’t even speak, proves that daughters are not much easier than sons. “No fighting and no wandering off, understand?”

Both his sons nod in unison, curls of red and black falling in front of their eyes. They’ll need their hair cut, and sooner than later if Catelyn can get them to stand still for more than a minute at a time. Despite actually having no blood relation whatsoever, the two are so alike it’s eerie. Benjen, who took the black not long after the Rebellion for shame of escorting Cat and not stopping the man in the Riverlands in time (even though they said he didn’t have to), firmly believes it’s because they’re good enough to treat the boys the same and  they’re too young to know they’re different.

From the way he looked at Robb after he said it instead of Jon, Ned thinks he must have figured out the truth for himself.

Jon scruffs the toe of his boot against the stone of the floor. “I promise,” he mumbles, and his younger brother echoes him a moment later.

“Good,” Ned says, and neither seem to be lying. “Now go find your mother and wash up for supper.” How they managed to accumulate so much dirt is a mystery.

Again, they nod, and Robb grabs his brother’s hand to go find Catelyn on the other side of the castle. Raising two sons is a hard task, especially when they aren’t his own, but it’s certainly worth it.

 

 

There’s a little boy named Theon, and perhaps he and Catelyn have something in their heart for broken children. Theon is Balon Greyjoy’s youngest son, and his father is so horrendously dismissive and almost cruel that Ned feels no real remorse for taking him away.

“We’ll make sure you’re happy here,” he says to the eight-year-old as he helps him pull a shirt over his head. His movements are greatly hindered by the cast Maester Luwin fashioned him to bind his broken wrist. “Our children are younger than you, but the boys not by much. And when your arm heals up, the weapon’s master can continue any archery lessons you had.”

Theon has a scuffed cheek. Maester Luwin doesn’t actually know if his arm will heal properly for him to use a bow. “Will I be allowed to go home?” he asks and when Ned says not for some time, perhaps, he doesn’t seem too bothered by it. “Are your sons learning archery, too?”

“Well, they’re too young for it now, but at least Robb will have to. He’s heir,” Ned answers. “Perhaps when the three of you are older you can help teach them.”

Surprisingly, Theon seems to perk up a little at that, which makes Ned think, to his great distaste, that he wasn’t told he was good at anything all that often. Or, even worse, his failings were commonly tallied. “How old are they?” he says.

Before he can answer, the door to the room opens and in comes tumbling the boys and Sansa, Catelyn leaning against the frame with one eyebrow raised. “I found them eavesdropping,” she tells them. “They thought they were being sneaky.”

With a sigh, Ned introduces the four children to each other. Theon looks startled, and his own children all seem about as guilty as usual. Well, at least they’ll finally have a friend outside of each other, he thinks, and almost laughs when Robb hides behinds Jon and Sansa hides him.

 

 

When they were young, he and Jon used to smile and laugh a lot, but as they get older, his older brother’s blatant displays of happiness become less and less frequent, and sometimes Robb has to force his. Robb’s heir, and he understands that he’s always going to have a lot of pressure on him, but he wishes he knew why sometimes Mother and Father would act so distant, especially since it’s rarely at the same time. “Am I doing something wrong?” he asks Theon around his tenth name day because Jon’s beginning to get strangers snidely commenting that he’s a Snow instead of a Stark even though no one in the family cares, so he’d feel guilty talking to him about it, and as much as he loves Sansa and Arya, they wouldn’t understand. Bran and Rickon are just too young. “No, well, obviously I am. _What_ am I doing wrong?”

Shrugging, Theon answers, “Maybe you’re scaring them. You’re scaring Jon and me lately.”

Oh, well, he was hoping his friend would tell him he wasn’t doing anything and he was only imaging it. “How?”

“Have you looked at yourself lately?” Theon says. “When’s the last time you got a full night’s sleep? You’re starting to look like a raccoon, Robb.”

“I’ve been behind on my historical studies,” he says, defensive, because in truth he’s been actively avoiding mirrors as yes, he noticed that too. “There are only so many hours in a given day to learn without putting some time at night.”

Theon leans on his bow and stares at him in exasperation. “Jon’s nearly a year older than you,” he says. “I understand that you’re heir, but of course you’re going to be at least a bit behind him.”

As Robb tries not to worry his bottom lip, which he already split open yesterday, he tells his friend, “I know, but why else won’t my parents look at me sometimes? That has to mean I’m doing something wrong, right?”

Again, Theon shrugs. “My father never looked at me,” he says. “Maybe it’s just something parents do.”

He doesn’t know how to articulate it without sounding insane, but it’s not just that Robb feels as if he’s doing something wrong—he feels as if _he’s_ wrong, inherently. And he can’t for the life of him fathom why. At least Jon, when he frowns a lot, has the excuse of strangers treating him as if he’s somehow lesser. But Robb is always treated as his position calls for, as heir of Winterfell, as the oldest legitimate son. So he can’t explain because nothing about it makes any sense.

Instead of struggling to even attempt, he turns back towards the straw target and says, “You’re probably right,” as he lifts his bow. “Where were we?”

“Of course I’m right, I’m older,” Theon answers and taps his elbows so he lowers it a hair. “Good,” he says, and continues on with the lesson as if nothing happened.

Robb tries to pretend it doesn’t bother him that it’s noon, yet Father isn’t on the balcony watching him.

 

 

Truly, Catelyn loves all her children, including the one who isn’t actually hers. And of course Robb is part of this as well, as he _is_ hers, and her oldest, and heir, but she has moments where she has trouble being around him. She loves him, as any mother loves her son, but sometimes she looks at him and is reminded quite suddenly and quite painfully of what happened, regardless of the number of times she tells herself it’s been years and it’s about time she moves past it. She knows Ned does something similar, where he’ll look at their son who isn’t actually his son and Robb’s a bad reminder what happened to his wife, made up of neat red curls and bright smiles.

Except that he’s not always smiling, or at least looking like he has the capacity to. She’s a terrible woman for it, but she knows the days where either she or Ned can’t find it in themselves to look, he sees it as personal failure. Theon, who has always been protective of him, only becomes worse during these times and scares off everyone except perhaps Sansa who gets too close. Catelyn knows she should fix this, that somehow there must be a way, but if there is she has yet to discover it. And for that, she feels awful.

 

 

So, Jon’s older and not really a _bad_ person, but Theon’s always liked Robb best. The boy actually knows how to be happy, which he likes a lot, because he’s not a particularly happy person himself. “I don’t understand how you and your sister can love these things so much,” he says, stealing a piece of his friend’s lemon cake as he sits with him on his solar floor. “No one likes lemons.”

“If you don’t like it, then don’t eat it,” Robb answers, and snatches the plate back from him. It’s good to see him eating. “Many people like lemon cakes, I’ll have you know. Sansa and I aren’t too strange.”

“That doesn’t stop the two of you from being _weird_ , though,” Theon says, and sucks frosting off the side of his thumb. “You two are three years apart; you’re not allowed to look like twins.”

Robb just rolls his eyes and says, “Shut up, Theon,” which is something so bratty he wouldn’t do it around anyone else. Despite their own age gap, sometimes Theon feels a bit flattered that of all the people in Winterfell, he’s the one the boy decided to be friends with and he’s not even a proper Northerner. It doesn’t matter how much of the sea is frozen out of him.

“I’m not saying it’s a bad thing,” he tells him. “You could look like Jon, who probably wouldn’t recognize happiness if it came and bit him on the ass.”

“All right, that one was just cruel.”

“It’s not cruel if it’s honest.”

Though Robb doesn’t smile, he doesn’t frown either. “Why do the two of you have to fight all the time?”

Of course, Theon can’t say that it’s more a competition than anything else, because Robb seems to care a lot for both of them but eventually he might only be able to care about one of them and it’s better all around for whoever he chooses. “Who else am I going to fight with?” Theon answers instead. “Arya? Nah, I need someone to argue with and make this place interesting.”

Now Robb does smile. “And you say _I’m_ weird.”

With a shrug, Theon says, “Guess we just have to be weird together then,” and the other boy accepts that so easily it’s almost disconcerting.

 

 

Theon has a mean streak sometimes and has always laughed at him most, telling him to smile more, but Jon’s noticed he never does it to Robb when his younger brother gets into one of his…things. Really, Jon doesn’t know what to call them. It would help if he knew the cause.

Now they’re fifteen and fourteen and this is Robb’s eighth since his first bad one at ten. “Mother or Father are going to tell you off again if you don’t stop,” he warns his brother, who only stays upright while training because Jon called for a yield and Ser Rodrik knew enough to leave. Theon isn’t here, thankfully, because he can very protective in the wrong way, and whenever Jon tries to set his brother straight he’ll make some horrible comment about how he shouldn’t actually call Mother his mother even when she told him to because he’s a Snow, not a Stark. As if that’s helpful. “You should get some sleep. Or at the very least have supper.”

Expectedly, Robb just frowns because he’s as stubborn as their father most days, a habit picked up by both of them after following him around endlessly as children. Everyone always says the two of them are nothing alike, but truthfully they can be very similar. Robb answers, “Mother has told me off _once_. You and Theon are the only ones who harp on me for nothing,” and rubs his eye.

Getting Theon is by far is his first choice, but Jon will if he has to, though it’s never come to it before. “Stop acting so childish, Robb,” he says. “A little sleep won’t kill you. If anything, it will make you feel better.”

“What makes you think I don’t feel well?”

Not even bothering to hide his exasperation, he motions vaguely up and down. Sometimes Robb can be just so, well, _childish._ “Because you’re about to fall over!” he says, beginning to get annoyed. “You might be heir, but I’m still older, so—”

His brother cuts in, “Theon already tries to use that excuse. It’s not going to work.”

Deciding that he doesn’t feel like arguing any longer, Jon reaches over and takes Robb’s sleeve. “Well,” he answers, “I’m not just older, I’m your older _brother_ , which means by customs of seniority, you have to listen to me,” and tugs Robb in the direction of the house.

“That’s not fair.”

“Who said anything about it being fair?”

Robb goes willingly enough now, and looks relieved. He knows it’s bad for him, Jon realizes with a twinge of sympathy because he’s older, but he doesn’t know everything, so he doesn’t understand why sometimes their parents just stop paying any mind to their own heir when they don’t even seem to do it to him. His brother knows it’s bad for him, and all he needed was the right excuse to stop.

           

 

Though Sansa spent half her twelve years of life dreaming of a lord from the south coming to the North to take her away from the cold, she doesn’t mind when her parents decide she should marry Theon instead, even if he is something of a brother and considerably older. He’s always been…odd, to say the least, and not very nice to Jon, but he’s so loyal to Robb, who can really be quite stupid sometimes. So really, she’s not surprised when she overhears him saying, “She’s so young that I’m trying not to think about it, but at least we’ll actually be brothers now.”

“I know you won’t hurt her, so I’ll spare telling you I’ll kill you if I do,” Robb answers and Sansa smiles because it’s like Septa’s stories, even if she isn’t being taken so far from home. If her parents want her locked away in North, they could have married her off to Karstark or an Umber or, worse, a Bolton. Bolton’s aren’t very handsome. “Did they say anything about why they decided this?”

She can’t see them, but she can near hear Theon’s shrug when he answers, “I didn’t exactly ask. I think we’re meant to stay here, though, instead of returning to the Pyke.”

“You don’t sound particularly upset about that,” Robb says.

“I don’t think my lord father or anyone else would be too happy about a Stark helping to rule the Iron Islands. And I didn’t even hear about lemon cakes until I came here,” Theon tells her brother. “Your sister deserves better.”

Then comes the sound of footsteps nearing the door and Sansa runs off before she can hear anymore.

 

 

When they find the direwolves and Jon excludes himself from his brothers and sisters, Ned almost cringes. Though he thinks of both boys as his sons as much as Bran or Rickon, little moments like this remind him that Jon Snow is much more Stark than Robb Stark. Which is why he’s relieved that right before he can tell his two oldest boys they have share, Jon finds the sixth pup. All three boys are grinning now, too, which is a nice change, as Bran just saw his first excecution, Jon doesn’t smile much anymore, and Robb only just got out of one of his moods. This time around was bad enough that Theon came to get Ned personally so he could tell his son to eat, sleep, and calm himself because part of being a lord is knowing where the limit is. He didn’t mentioned how much those periods of time scare him and Catelyn.

Now all the boys are walking at the back of the party, cradling the direwolves in their arms and the beasts seem content to stay. “This one’s the littlest next to yours, Jon,” Robb is saying and Ned doesn’t look behind to see which one he’s referring too. “He’ll be good for Rickon.”

“How’s Ghost for a name?” says Jon. “Pure white, small—seems appropriate enough.”

Theon laughs at him and answers, “That’s what makes it too uncreative,” and adds, “Do you think Sansa will like this one?” before an argument can start.

Suddenly Bran appears at Ned’s side and the pup yips in his arms. “Do you think Summer is a good name, Father?” he asks, holding him like he’s a babe instead of an animal. “As we found him at the end of the Long Summer.”

Behind them, Robb says, “I think I’ll call him Grey Wind.  Two names, because Theon doesn’t have one of his own,” and Jon says he’s too nice for his own good while Theon protests he doesn’t need a direwolf to make him happy.

“It’s a great name, Bran,” Ned tells the boy, and puts his hand on his shoulder. “Now, I need you to promise me something.”

“Yes, Father?”

“Don’t allow your brothers to trick Rickon into naming his anything…strange.”

Very serious, Bran answers, “I promise, Father,” and Ned manages not to laugh.

The older boys are still talking—arguing, more like, caught up in a moment of youthful happiness. He wishes it could last, but winter is coming and summer children will grow up much too quickly.

 

 

“You want to leave?”

Not a half hour ago Robb had to witness at spectacularly large argument between Sansa and Father because King Robert informed him rather than asked that she’s to marry his son Joffrey, which forced an end to her now year-long betrothal to Theon. So this already means that not only is his sister going to leave, but also that his best friend is no longer marrying into the family.

And now Jon’s here telling him he’s leaving to join the Night’s Watch, which at its core is leaving your old family behind to make a new one.  And all his brother has to say about it is “I thought it best.”

To create room for the royal family and everyone that came along with them, Theon and Jon were both temporarily put into Robb’s room, but right now his friend is out trying to consol Sansa. Ghost and Grey Wind roll around together on the floor. “If I’m not allowed to use vague answers, then you’re not either,” he says because he wants a real reason. Their sisters leaving is bad enough. “And don’t use the ‘I’m older’ excuse—I’m sixteen, it doesn’t work anymore.”

“I’m still older.”

“ _Jon._ ”

His brother sighs. “I’m a bastard, Robb,” he says. “A lucky one, but still a bastard. Even Mother, who I shouldn’t even be _calling_ Mother, tries to pretend I’m part of the family, but I’m still a Snow. I’ve got a lot here in Winterfell to be thankful for and I am, but we both know there’s no future for me.”

“You’re a Stark, even without the name. There will always be a future for you in Winterfell,” Robb answers, as he’s not just going to let Jon leave without a fight even if his brother does always win. “You’ve heard Uncle Benjen’s stories of the Wall, same as the rest of us. He’s mentioned more than once how many people die—”

Jon places a hand on his shoulder. “Then it’s a good thing I grew up fighting next to you, isn’t it?” he says and it takes more self control than Robb wants to admit to stop himself from shoving him off. He’s treating this too lightly and he never treats anything lightly. “I know men of the Night’s Watch aren’t supposed to leave, but I’ll see if I can come to Winterfell with Uncle Benjen sometimes. The Wall’s far, but not impossibly so.”

“Just promise me you won’t go and let yourself die, Jon.”

“I’ll be fine, Robb. We Starks are hard to kill.”

 

 

Cersei’s hands are shaking when she takes a seat next to her husband at the main hall’s table. Ned Stark is there as well, and Jaime. “We were going for an afternoon walk,” she lies, something so reflexive now that even in their attentive grief they don’t notice. “We rounded the corner just as the rock beneath his foot crumbled. He was all the way by the window.”

“Well, it’s good the two of you were to call for help, Your Grace,” Lord Stark says, sounding even more exhausted than he looks. “Maester Luwin believes that if he were found any later, he wouldn’t have lived.”

On one hand, this is good news, because a boy of ten doesn’t deserve to die in such a gruesome way but on the other, the last thing she and Jamie need is for Robert to learn the truth. At any luck he’ll wake with no memories, but when is she ever lucky? If she were, Bran Stark wouldn’t have been climbing in the first place. He wouldn’t be there to be so shocked by what he saw that he tried to step back on a place where there was no solid ground and fell that long, long way down.

They talk just enough time for Lady Catelyn to join them and thank her and Jaime for helping save her son. Then the Starks very, very politely dismiss them, and Cersei hasn’t been so relieved to leave a room in years.

 

 

Theon is absolutely not sulking because Sansa and Arya just hugged him goodbye when Jon comes to find him. “Come to bid me farewell, Snow?” he says and knows he sounds bitter, but he’s been in Winterfell since he was eight and suddenly everyone is leaving. “I didn’t realize we were friends.”

Of course Jon, being Jon, doesn’t even honor that with a proper answer. “I know Robb’s sixteen, but look out for him,” he says instead. “Make sure he doesn’t get himself killed. Or accidently kill himself.”

“I might not be a Stark, but I’m not useless, either,” Theon says, irritated. “ _I’m_ not the one leaving.”

“I have to do this.”

“No one’s making you.”

Jon sets his mouth in a line. “Just…look out for my little brother. He’ll be looking out for the rest of them,” he says. “Now, I have to go see Bran. I supposed this is goodbye, Greyjoy. I think I might even miss you.”

Even though Jon’s infuriating most days, Theon thinks he might even miss him, too. “Give it a week on the Wall,” he tells him. “You’ll realize there’s not even someone there to have a proper argument with and coming running back to Winterfell.”

“One week?”

“One week.”

“I’ll hold you do that.”

They shake on it, even though the bet is halfhearted at best, and Theon thinks that Jon really is a cunt for leaving.

 

 

Father, his sister, and Jon have left, and Mother’s locked herself away with Bran. Most of the officials are gone too, which means it’s Robb’s first time as acting Lord of Winterfell and the only one offering him any advice is Theon.

When Mother finally does come see him, it’s the morning after the man tried to kill Bran, and her hands are rolled up in bandages. Robb’s been up all night again, worried for her and his little brother and busy making those appointments and calculating costs like he promised. Like he should, as Lord of Winterfell. “You should be resting,” he tells his mother when she enters without so much as a knock. “You’re injured.”

Every slight movement of her hands looks as though it hurts. “I already have,” she answers, though he’s not entirely sure he believes her. “I see the same can’t be said for you. What did your father tell you before he left?”

To remember he can’t take care of the North if he’s in ill condition himself. It’s not exactly the first time he’s heard it from either of them. “I couldn’t sleep,” he says and holds out the paper to her. “Are these good choices? You know all these men a lot better than I do.”

She reads it over slowly, almost like she’s stalling. “They’re very good,” she says with a faint smile before placing it on his table. “Robb, I need you to find Theon. The two of you are to meet me in the godswood immediately. Then after I’ll order him to _sit_ on you if that’s what it takes for you to get some sleep.”

“Mother, I—”

“You’ve known most of these men all your life,” she adds before he can object, insist that, as usual, there’s nothing wrong and everyone’s making a fuss over nothing, “and half the names on this list are spelled incorrectly. I already have one sick son, I don’t need two.”

Instantly, he feels terrible, and glances away to avoid her gaze. “I understand,” he says. “I’ll find Theon.”

She tells him to be quick about it and leaves. A cold wind rattles the castle windows and it feels like winter is already here.

 

 

The number of Starks in Winterfell has dwindled down to three and apparently Bran said he’d rather be dead. Theon actually cringes when he hears that, though his friend doesn’t see it. As of now Robb is taking this as his latest personal failing that has nothing to do with him.

“I wish Jon were here,” he says, running his fingers through his hair in the way that tugs on his curls and Lady Catelyn left not long ago. “Jon’s always been closer to our siblings than I have, except maybe Sansa.”

“You’re still his brother,” Theon says, though he doesn’t deny it’s true, as Robb spent such a long time running around trying to please his parents that he never gave himself the chance to become terribly close to anyone outside of Sansa and Jon. “He could have woken up alone. He’ll realize that eventually.”

Robb, though, doesn’t even seem to be listening. “What am I supposed to do?” he says. “Ten-year-olds aren’t supposed to want to die. How can I sit back and let him feel that way?”

“Bran only just woke up,” Theon says. “Give him a few days to readjust.”

When Bran fell, the castle was so full he was sharing a room with Rickon. Then he opened his eyes and suddenly it’s almost empty. To Theon, giving the poor boy a few days to gather himself isn’t terribly unreasonable. Whether Robb agrees or disagrees, he doesn’t say, and the two of them sit a while in silence.

 

 

Though Jon made it past a single week at the Wall, he has yet to make any friends. At supper, Uncle Benjen or, surprisingly, Tyrion Lannister are the ones that tend to sit with him. Today it’s Lord Tyrion, who only a few hours ago delivered the news about Bran. Without so much as a hello, he says, “So, tell me, because I’m forgetting. Was the brother that fell the youngest or the second youngest? You have too many siblings to keep track of, Jon Snow.”

Like Thorne, Lord Tyrion puts emphasis on _Snow_ when he calls Jon by his name but unlike Thorne, he’s never particularly malicious about it. “Second youngest,” he answers. “Rickon’s the youngest. He’s six. Bran’s ten.”

“And what of the rest of them?” Lord Tyrion asks, not sounding quite like he cares but not quite like he doesn’t either. “I know Lady Sansa’s the oldest of your sisters and roughly an appropriate age for a marriage since my sister’s husband was so insistent that your father break her original betrothal instead of accepting the younger one.”

Though Jon doesn’t trust Theon about a lot of things, he had trusted him to not hurt Sansa after their marriage, whenever that would be. Regardless of King Robert’s position, it was still blatantly disrespectful to Father to call off an arrangement like that. “She’s thirteen,” he says. “Arya’s eleven. Robb’s sixteen and I’m the oldest at seventeen.”

“You know, most bastards don’t include themselves in a sibling age count.”

“Most bastards aren’t set at the high table during the royal family’s arrival feast.”

Lord Tyrion nods his head slightly with a raised eyebrow, whatever that’s supposed to mean. “You’re certainly one of the more interesting families I’ve met. Lady Stark seems to love you more than most parents love their children.”

Yes, he knows this too. As he told Robb before left, he’s fortunate. There’s a reason he doesn’t like Thorne constantly commenting on his status _._ His surname may be Snow, but he’s still a Stark. This conversation is now heading in a direction he doesn’t like. “I’m the oldest,” he says again, and tries to keep his tone casual. “That has to mean something.”

After he downs the rest of his wine, Lord Tyrion tells him, “I plan to return to Casterly Rock soon. Do your brother a favor and don’t get yourself killed. You two seem much closer than Jaime and I.”

Though he doesn’t specify which brother, Jon knows he means Robb. He might be close to the rest of his siblings, too, and Robb has Theon in a way not even Sansa could, but at some point the two of them became much too dependent on each other. Until now, Jon hadn’t even noticed.

Until now, it hadn’t been a problem, and that’s what frightens Jon the most.

 

 

Sansa is in the tent she shares with her sister, arms curled around her direwolf’s neck, when Father comes to her. Earlier, once Nymeria had run away, she’d been so afraid that someone was going to call for Lady’s death instead.

“What really happened?” Father asks quietly after he takes a seat next to her on the bed. “I know you saw.”

As no one in the world is more trustworthy than her family, she explains everything in a rush. Father won’t tell the King, of course, and Sansa would rather tell a half-truth to the royal family than lie to him. “I didn’t want to get anyone in more trouble than they already were,” she says when she’s done, “no matter how annoying Arya is.”

Father slips his arm around her shoulders and Lady nuzzles at his side. “Marrying Joffrey won’t be like marrying Theon,” he says, though he must know she’s already figured that out for herself and that’s why she lied. “You’ve spent your whole life resolving fights between him and Jon better than Robb ever could, but with Joffrey you’ll have to choose a side, even when you think he’s wrong—or know he’s wrong. King’s Landing is going to be a dangerous place, Sansa, and I need you and your sister to be careful.”

All she ever dreamed of for years was visiting King’s Landing. Especially after today, she doesn’t want to as much now. “Why did King Robert choose me?” she asks, because that has to be considered a valid question. All the stories have given her a very clear picture of how this is supposed to work: once a promise of marriage is made, it’s not supposed to be broken. It’s just not…honorable, to put it simply enough. Theon may not be a knight or a prince, but he’s still a lord, and that’s breaking every rule of lady loves. “Is it because he loved Aunt Lyanna?”

There’s a moment’s pause before Father answers, “That’s a complicated story for another time. Right now you should get some sleep and tomorrow morning resolve your fight with Arya.”

She doesn’t want to resolve her fight with Arya, since her sister nearly got Lady killed, but she agrees anyway. Like before, with the King and the Queen and Prince Joffrey, sometimes agreement is the only way to make things easier.

 

 

During his last visit, his welcome was about what could be expected of Northern company, but while at the Wall, Tyrion learned just enough from Benjen and Jon about the new Lord of Winterfell that the reaction he gets this time isn’t too unexpected, either. He wonders if Lady Catelyn isn’t here to greet him as some sort of test for her oldest son, though that seems cruel, and he knows better than to ask. With Lord Robb’s back tight as a bowstring, now isn’t the time for aggravation.

It’s not until after he gives directions for the specialized saddle that the boy warms up to him, but it still seems safer to avoid the false hospitality. “The feather beds in the brothels are soft enough,” Tyrion tells him, and maybe if Robb Stark had a girl and some wine he wouldn’t be so tense. “I’ll spend the night there, and both of us will sleep easier.”

“I’ll show Lord Tyrion out,” the Greyjoy “ward” says almost too quickly and though Benjen said he and his nephew never stopped fighting, Jon didn’t seem bothered by him the few times he came up in conversation. He should probably get a girl, too—some pretty little redhead with hair bright as copper that he can fuck and pretend is Sansa. Even if she’s too young for the two of them to love each other, that must have hurt. And now she’s stuck with his repulsive nephew. “This way, My Lord.”

“Thank you again for the saddle,” adds Robb, and looks so incredibly awkward when they leave it’s funny.

Yes, Tyrion will certainly miss the odd charms of the North. It’s a nice change from King’s Landing or Casterly Rock. Perhaps when winter is finished and Robb Stark knows what he’s doing, he’ll come visit again.

 

 

Before Mother left, Rickon would cling to him and cry, always asking question. Since she went to see Father, this has only gotten worse.

At night Robb does what Mother would do, and tucks his little brother into bed with a story. She did with Bran, too, but he hasn’t let him. “When are they coming back?” Rickon asks, and Robb pulls the furs to his chin.

“Mother will be back soon,” he answers, even though that isn’t what his brother meant.

“What about everyone _else?_ ”

This is a lie because really he doesn’t know, but he says, “Father and the girls won’t be long, either.”

“What about Jon?”

Everything out be a lot easier if Jon were around. Bran would probably talk to him, he’d be better at answering Rickon’s questions. When they were young, he had to put up with all of Robb’s, after all. “Not for a while,” he says, because that’s not one he can get around.

Rickon frowns and turns on his side, pulling the furs to his ears. With a quiet sigh, Robb leans over and blows out the candle before leaving.

 

 

Now that he’ll be able to ride, Bran doesn’t feel so useless anymore.

Tonight he lets Robb put out the candle instead of doing it himself and when he catches sight of his brother’s relieved smile in that last second before the room plunges into darkness, he wishes he’d done this earlier.

 

 

So Sam’s more than a bit of a coward, and so far unskilled in combat, but he reminds Jon of a younger brother, even though he’s older. It’s not that he reminds him of any _specific_ sibling, but he feels that streak of protectiveness all the same. “Ghost won’t hurt you,” he says once they sort everything out and Sam acts as proof that even if he were legitimate, Jon would still be fortunate. “As long as you aren’t a threat, our direwolves aren’t as scary as they look.”

Ghost makes a noise low in his throat and Jon tangles his fingers in his fur. Without Uncle Benjen’s special permission, he wouldn’t have been able to come. “Our?” Sam repeats, but he does inch closer to the fire. “Do you have other siblings with direwolves?”

“All six of us, even the youngest,” Jon answers and doesn’t mention that he almost ended up without one, “and Robb unofficially shares with our house ward. You should’ve seen them when we first found them in the woods. They were so small we could all fit two in our arms at a time.”

Still eyeing Ghost warily, Sam asks, “And how big do they normally get?”

With a slight shrug, he says, “Until that day I’d never seen a real direwolf before. I _think_ they’re fully grown now—or near enough.”

“Oh. Comforting.”

Jon smiles, because it’s funny to him, as at home people were more fascinated than afraid. Everyone except Mother, who insisted direwolves weren’t meant for pets, and berated Father so loudly the maids had to run away to hide their laughter and he, Robb, and their sisters didn’t bother to try. “If he won’t attack Thorne, he won’t attack you,” he tells his new friend. “Isn’t that right, Ghost?”

In answer, Ghost barks and licks his face, which gets Sam to smile, too.

 

 

Even though Theon isn’t a Stark (and now never will be because the King doesn’t understand simple common courtesy), he’s lived in Winterfell as a ward for more than half his life, so it shouldn’t be too unreasonable that he’s angry on Lord Stark’s behalf.

As he watches Bran ride in circles around the clearing, he asks, “When are you going to tell him?”

Robb doesn’t even look over when he answers, “Not now,” before quickly adding, “Not too fast, Bran.”

Though his father’s injury and mother’s continued absence has sent him back into one of his moods, he’s gotten better at hiding it. Theon feels like this should reason enough for his friend to listen to him and on most occasions, he’s one of the few who can get Robb to stop being so stubborn. “Blood for blood,” he says. “You need to make the Lannisters pay for Jory and the others.”

Bran continues around the clearing, but this is enough to get Robb to tear his eyes away. “You’re talking about war.”

“I’m talking about justice.”

“Only Lord of Winterfell can call the banners and raise an army.”

“The Lannisters put a spear through your father’s leg. You’re not a boy anymore, Robb,” Theon says, even though he still _does_ think of the sixteen-year-old as a boy most days, despite being shorter. “The Kingslayer’s running to Casterly Rock where no one can touch him—”

“What? You want me to march on Casterly Rock?” Before he can say anything, his friend pushes his fingers through his hair. “Jaime Lannister might be the Queen’s brother, but Father’s Hand of the King. That makes him the second most powerful man in Westeros. I have to trust that he’ll convince the King to do something, which seems like the saner option than starting a war.”

“Did King Robert seem remotely competent while he was here?” Theon says because they’re in the middle of the forest, so he can say what he likes. “Really, what do expect him to do? They attacked your father, they already started the war.”

Again, Robb tugs on his curls and that’s almost enough to make him feel guilty. “Theon, I don’t think I can handle doing anything more than what I’m already doing,” he snaps, and it’s more honest about it than he usually is. “I’m only in Winterfell and I’ve done nothing useful for anyone. Do you really think I could go to—where’s Bran? Bran!”

Theon looks up and finds the boy gone, something they should have noticed immediately. “Go around,” he says, picking up his bow because something doesn’t feel right, and Robb nods but doesn’t answer.

Except that Bran, it turns out, isn’t fine, or isn’t completely fine, and Theon knows better than to let it bother him when Robb’s mind immediately jumps to the worst case scenario where for the first time in years he actually missed his target. Just like he knows better than to argue when his friend says to keep the wildling girl alive and manages not to think about how he promised Jon he’d make sure Robb didn’t get himself killed. This was very nearly getting himself killed.

If only the stupid boy lost that bet.

 

 

Sansa got to keep Lady. Now Sansa’s going to be able to go back and marry Theon like she wanted to begin with, all while Arya lost Nymeria and now has to lose Syrio too. “You can always get a new dance master in Winterfell,” her sister says, but she can’t really care.

“It won’t be the same,” Arya says, and shoves all her clothes in half-folded. She’ll save packing Needle for last. “This isn’t fair. Father’s staying here, so why can’t I?”

Unlike her, Sansa folds everything neatly with even creases so her things take up as little room as possible. A waste of time, or at least that’s what it feels like to Arya. “Father doesn’t like it here,” Sansa answers even though she wears her hair like a southern girl. “He wouldn’t want one of us to stay without the other. We’ll get to see everyone again, at least—or nearly everyone.”

Yes, because their brother’s still gone and will keep being gone since he decided to go leave for the Wall. “I heard Jon tell Robb he would try to visit,” Arya says. She wasn’t supposed to overhear the conversation, but she did anyway.

“Did he mean it, or was he just saying it to stop an argument?” Sansa asks.

“He’s the son of the Lord of Winterfell,” Arya answers, frowning. “Of course he’ll be able to come home sometimes.”

For some irritating reason, her sister doesn’t seem convinced. “Maybe for a big event,” she sounds, clearly skeptical. “Something big like a wedding.”

That will be a while, and since Arya will have to leave Syrio she’d rather have Jon there waiting already, but she supposes this is preferable to never seeing him again. And that’s something she can live with.

 

 

It doesn’t take long for Ned to figure out Robert’s children aren’t really his children. It takes even less time for him to confront the Queen alone.

“Has he done this before?” he asks, referring to the bruise, because the hit shocked him and perhaps he didn’t know his friend as well as thought. Even though it’s not exactly the point behind this conversation, he’ll feel better if he understands the motives.

Queen Cersei leans back against the fountain, all confidence and arrogance, but for the first time, it seems false. “Never to the face,” she answers. “Jaime would have killed him. My brother is worth a thousand of your friend.”

As he thought, then. “Your brother,” he says, “or your lover?”

For just a moment, her mask breaks and she doesn’t do anything. Then she says, “Targaryens wed brothers and sisters for three hundred years to keep bloodlines pure. Jaime and I are more than brother and sister. We shared a womb. Came into this world together, we belong together.”

“My son saw you with him.” He meant to leave this with more preamble, but it slips out anyway.

“If you’re insinuating we did something, your boy’s fall was an accident,” she says. “He was climbing too high and when he saw us, he was so surprised, he took a step backwards and nothing was there. If we wanted your boy dead, why would Jaime run to get you instead of leave him?”

That was a thought that crossed his mind, too, but Lysa is Catelyn’s sister and he trusts her. With her word already against them for Jon Arryn, and Tyrion’s dagger, that’s enough evidence to warrant suspicious. “What of the assassin, then?” he asks. “The one sent with your younger brother’s knife to kill him?”

When Queen Cersei says, “What assassin?” her confusion is so genuine he doesn’t think even she could fake it. Then what this means comes to her and she continues, “That’s why your wife—Tyrion’s blade has been missing for months. Jaime laughed at him for a week for caring more about his books than the one weapon he owned.”

If not the Lannisters, then who? There’s no one else with a vendetta against his family. “I owe your brother a formal apology next time he comes to King’s Landing, then,” he says because he doesn’t think she’s lying. He never liked her in all the time he’s known her and he still has no fondness for her twin after what he did, but there’s something to be said for this. And for his own hypocrisy if he does something drastic. “Well, regardless, your children aren’t heir to the throne, Your Grace. Not when they’re all Jaime’s.”

“Thank the gods,” she says. “On the rare occasion Robert leaves his whores long enough to stumble into my bed, I finish him off in other ways. In the morning he doesn’t remember.”

“You’ve always hated him.”

“Hated him?” she repeats. “I worshiped him. Every girl in the Seven Kingdoms dreamed of him, but he was mine by oath. And when I finally saw him on our wedding day in the Sept of Baelor, lean and fierce and black-bearded, it was the happiest moment of my life. Then that night he crawled on top of me sticking of wine and did what he did, what little he could do, and whispered in my ear _Lyanna._ Your sister was a corpse and I was a living girl and he loved her more than me.”

While that doesn’t excuse anything she’s done, that really does make him feel terrible. It doesn’t help that he has Lyanna’s child hidden away at home, raised as his own son. “I’m sorry for what Robert has done to you,” he says, and means it, “but Joffrey still isn’t—what is it?”

She’s looking down now, finally ashamed, or at least visibly so. “I don’t want Joffrey to be King,” she tells him. “He’s Jaime’s child, I know that without question, but somehow he’s more like Robert than either of us. I love him as much as I love Tommen and Mycella, and it’s out of love that I think the position of King would be...bad for him. I just don’t know how to stop it. If Robert learns the truth, we’ll all be dead by morning. My father might have given the order to murder the Targaryen children, but Robert never thought to protest.”

Even though he told himself he would be strong, some of Ned’s resistance gives at mention of the Targaryen children. Then there’s Robb, who shouldn’t be heir either, but it’s different for Lord of Winterfell than it is for King of Westeros. Even bastards can become lords if legitimized. Now that she says it, too, he feels less guilty. “Joffrey won’t be King,” he says, as firm on the matter as he can manage. “Robert’s on the hunt and he should have a while before he dies. I have the time.”

Queen Cersei is so blatantly relieved it’s unnerving. A breeze sweeps by, rattling the bushes not far behind her, and she leans back against the fountain. She doesn’t need to thank him for him to understand that she’s grateful. And since he understands in a way that’s not quite so bad because so many people comment how much Robb resembles him in personality if not in looks, he adds, “Robert always paid more attention to Joffrey than Tommen and Mycella. Sometimes it doesn’t matter who you’re born to, but who raises you. Jon doesn’t have any Tully blood in him, but there are times he’s a lot like Catelyn.”

“Your wife is a much better woman than Robert is a man.”

“Still. Don’t blame yourself for that, Your Grace.”

She doesn’t answer, and he takes this as a sign to leave. It’s time to make a plan as to how to keep an heir off the throne without hurting anyone, and he has a feeling this will almost impossibly hard.

 

 

Later today they’re supposed to be taking their oaths, but Benjen’s horse was just found without a rider. He’s no longer so assured of his own decision, though he hasn’t had a firm stance on it since he got here. His uncle going missing feels like a bad sign and if it really does mean something, once he swears himself to the Night’s Watch, he can’t leave. What if Father needs his help? What if _Robb_ needs his help?

It doesn’t take long for his new friends to realize his distress. “You can’t be thinking of leaving, Jon,” says Pyp, taking a seat across from him. “Not when you’re the best with a sword out of all of us.”

In the beginning, they hadn’t even cared. Now Grenn’s saying, “We’re almost there. You’ll be assigned a Ranger and you can look for your uncle behind the Wall.”

“You don’t know my family,” he tells them, trying to keep his leg steady. “My brother’s acting in my father’s stead, he barely takes care of himself when everyone’s home.”

“We’re your brothers too,” Sam answers, but they don’t understand, they don’t _know._ People who aren’t Starks just can’t. “You can’t look out for him forever.”

Pyp stole a wheel of cheese for his sister, but Sam’s father threatened to kill him. Robb’s split his lip before from worrying and tugs on his curls when he’s nervous. Though he might have Theon for now and though the two of them can’t look out for him forever, maybe Jon should stay by him while he can.

Even so, he says, “You’re right,” and wishes immediately he could take it back.

 

 

“King Robert is dead, Your Grace,” Lord Baelish says, “and we have Ned Stark in custody for treason.”

“Treason?” Cersei repeats and feels nothing for her dead husband. “What could the honorable Ned Stark possibly do to be considered treason?”

“I believe attempting to keep Prince Joffrey from his claim to the throne is treason enough.”

Her wine glass shatters on the floor.

 

 

Sansa sits across from the Queen, who won’t look at her, and three advisors who claim her father is a traitor. Except that Father isn’t a traitor, that can’t possibly be true, this has to be a mistake, he wouldn’t do that—

It takes her a moment to realize she’s saying this out loud. “Please, Your Grace,” she says, looking to Queen Cersei because someone here has to believe here, “send for my father, he’ll tell you. The King was his friend.”

With a brief smile, the Queen tells her, “Sansa, sweet, you were innocent of any wrong. We know that. But now you must write to Lady Catelyn and the eldest—what’s his name?”

“Robb.” He would know what to do if he were here. In their games as children, he was always given the role of the prince who saves the day.

The Queen slides over a slip of paper. “Word of your father’s arrest will reach him soon, no doubt,” she says. “Best it comes from you. If you would help your father—urge him to keep the king’s peace.” She adds a quill. “Tell him to come to King’s Landing and swear fealty to Joffrey.”

Everyone is staring so intently and Sansa’s afraid to look up, but she manages. She starts, “If I could see my father, talk to him about,” but stops when Lord Baelish very slightly shakes his head.

“You disappoint me, child,” the Queen says. “We’ve told you of your father’s treason. Why would you want to speak with a traitor?”

“I only meant—what will happen to him?”

Picking up the quill again, she answers, “That depends on your brother. And on you.”

Queen Cersei has her write that Father is held prisoner, but not charged with death, and Robb has to come to the capital and say Joffrey is his King. Everything is silent except her voice and the scratch of the quill and Sansa’s hand shakes.

 

 

After Maester Luwin leaves, Robb sits and Theon asks, “Are you afraid?”

Looking down at his shaking hands, he answers, “I must be.”

Theon pushes his plate closer to him. “Then eat,” he says. “ _That_ will only get worse if you don’t.”

“After this?” Robb says, and puts the slip of paper on the table. “The last thing I want to do right now is eat.”

“We’re about to go war. You can’t survive a war on no food, no sleep, and constantly worrying about what everyone else thinks,” Theon tells him and puts a hand on his shoulder. “I gave your brother my word I wouldn’t let you get yourself killed. Don’t make me an oath breaker.”

If only Jon hadn’t gone to take the black. Though it seems stupid, he’d feel a lot better if his older brother were here. If he hadn’t left with just a promise not to get himself killed, and hadn’t made Theon promise not to let Robb get killed because the Wall’s bad enough but now there’s a war, too, and how’s it possible that everyone is going to come back alive? “I’m not looking into dying in the near future, Theon,” he says, and runs his fingers through his hair. “I just want my family back.”

“Good. Then you’re going to be smart about this?”

“You know, I still am your lord.”

“And I’m still trying to keep you alive.”

He doesn’t have an answer to this, so he stays quiet and forces himself to eat.

 

 

The lords and their men are all gathering their belongings to being the night’s march, and Theon finds him while he’s cleaning off Grey Wind’s fur. Robb only just said goodbye to Bran and Rickon, thinks his friend must’ve done the same if the look on his face is anything to go by, and the blood is flaked and dry and hard to remove.

Though Grey Wind whines, he stays still. Theon says, “That could have gone a lot worse.”

“Tell that to Lord Umber,” Robb answers, and doesn’t look up. “So, how terrible at this am I?”

Theon takes a seat across from him and scratches behind Grey Wind’s ear. “Not as bad as you think,” he says. “You got them to all agree with each other. I was barely eight, so I don’t remember very well, but the lords during my father’s rebellion never seemed to stop fighting.”

If it takes a couple lost fingers to gather men to a common cause at every turn, then Robb _really_ doesn’t think he can do this. Without his direwolf’s intervention, he doesn’t know how he would have stopped all the arguing. “You kept your knife drawn for the rest of the night,” he says, and dips the rag he’s using back into the bucket of water. “I never thought you’d take a promise to my brother so seriously.”

“I can when we have a mutual interest,” Theon tells him, and Grey Wind shakes his head. He’s clean, finally. “Besides, you’re still my _lord._ ”

Robb throws the rag at him, which he catches, but it gets him wet and that’s what matters. “Well,” he says, “as your _lord_ , I command you to shut your mouth, play nice, and get your things. We’re leaving.”

As he stands, Theon says, “Yes, Lord Stark,” and Grey Wind growls. “All right, all right. Stay safe for the five minutes I’m gone, will you?”

“I’m not that incompetent, Theon,” he says with a frown.

“Keep telling yourself, Robb.”

 

 

Under his furs, Robb feels thinner than usual, but his hug is tight and his body warm. Her husband is taken prisoner, her girls in the capital, her eldest son at the Wall, but he’s here and he’s well.

“I remember when you were young,” she says, brushing her thumb against his cheek, “and you followed your brother into the godswood because you were afraid of a story. Now I find you leading a host to war.”

He’s looking at her evenly when he tells her, “There was no one else.”

When most boys are sixteen, they’re still in training, or squires, or tripping over their own feet trying to become men. Here he is, an army already gathered to his heel. “No one else?” she says. “Who were those men I saw here?”

Glancing beyond her, he answers, “None of them are Starks.”

Neither are you, she thinks for the first time in quite a while, but swallows it down. “All of them are seasoned in battle,” she says.

“If you think you can send me back to Winterfell—”

“I would, if that I could.”

He sounds more afraid than indignant, which is a change from the way he spoke to his men not three minutes earlier. Children learn from their parents, they notice even what adults try to hide, and she and Ned forced an extra pressure onto him that he didn’t deserve. So here he is, sixteen and leading a host to war, and he’s more afraid of failing his parents as a son than he is of Tywin Lannister.

That’s her fault and hers alone because here’s a sixteen-year-old boy who grew up much too fast.

 

 

“Green boy,” Father says, and Tyrion taps his fingers against the table. “One taste of battle and he’ll run back to Winterfell with his tail between his legs.”

“Maybe,” he says, “though the boy has a certain…determination.”

Father narrows his eyes. He wouldn’t understand and Cersei wouldn’t, though perhaps Jaime would, but there are few powers in the world more empowering than the need to please one’s parents. Perhaps, unlike Tyrion, the Stark boy might even succeed.

Enemies now or not, that’s a sight Tyrion would almost like to see.

 

 

Robb has this horrible, counterproductive habit of doubting his every decision, so Theon is genuinely surprised when he gathers all eighteen thousand men and calls for volunteers to act on what’s potentially a death march if they can’t retreat in time. “I expected two hundred at most,” he says later as they all organize themselves and recite the plan again, “not two thousand.”

Sometimes men are willing to lay down their lives for glory, or for their lords. Sometimes they just want to die. As much as he hates it, Theon knows his friend isn’t too sheltered of this. “They’ll come back,” he answers, sounding more confident than he feels. “We’ll get that bridge, split, and they’ll make it back.”

“This still feels like murder,” Robb says. “If they don’t make it back, two thousand men are going to die. How many widows and orphans will that make? Or childless parents? Some of these men are barely older than me.”

Though it’s a smart, if not a bit risky, play, he’s obviously got the head for war; he just doesn’t have the attitude to go along with it. Theon might never have fought a war either, but even he’s a little better at staying objective about this. “If you want to save your father and sisters, this is the way to do it,” he says. “You’re right—Tywin Lannister will suspect an attack on his son. It’s better to give him a distraction. Then we can ride off to King’s Landing where I can valiantly rescue Sansa, marry her, pretend to like her lemon cakes, and it will be just like all those stories she loves.”

Even if it’s not much, that does get him a hint of a smile. “I suppose.”

Then Lord Umber comes by and says the scouts returned and the road to Lord Frey’s is clear. The war’s nearly started.

 

 

One of Petyr Baelish’s spies overheard one little piece of their conversation—just enough to think Ned Stark planned on denying Joffrey’s claim to the throne without them conspiring—and now he’s set for excecution. The fact that the honorable fool went to Lord Baelish for help only made it worse. “It’s too late now,” Cersei says when she visits him in the dungeons, bearing the gifts of water and food because Joffrey as King meant he could deny Robert’s final command if he wanted, which he did. “I’m not risking the life of my children for the truth.”

“I hadn’t expected you to,” Stark answers, and sounds resigned to it, “but you’re here, so you want something.”

As being down here for too long will be suspicious, she goes past idle conversation and says, “Swear fealty to Joffrey. I’ve convinced him to let you join the Night’s Watch with your brother and son. Sweet Sansa already pleaded for your life in the throne room today.”

“You think my life is some precious thing to me?” he says, his face blank and tone bleak. “That I would trade my honor for a few more years of what—of what? You grew learning how to be a noble woman, a mother. You learnt that craft and you learned it well. But I grew up with soldiers. I learned how to die a long time ago.”

Really, she doesn’t want him to die. He said he’d help, promised even, and if they had more time maybe he even would have succeeded. Joffrey has too much of Robert in him and she knows this no matter how many times she told herself he could be like his father. As his mother, all she wants is what’s best for him and though she believes the only way to rule is through fear, she watched her late husband deteriorate into something else entirely. She doesn’t wish to watch her son do the same. Or worse.

 Sighing, she says, “What of your daughter's life, Lord Stark? What of Robb’s?”

His forehead creases in confusion. “Robb?”

Lord Varys never told him, then. Pity. “He marches south with an army of Northerners,” she tells him. “Loyal boy, fighting for the freedom of his mother’s husband. Does he know he’s a bastard, Lord Stark, or did you plan on hiding it as I did with my children?”

“What do you—”

“Don’t try to hide it.” She knows she sounds tired, but she _is_ tired, and maybe a bit scared, though she’s not going to say that. “It’s something you and I have in common. Bastard heirs. He has your personality, some of your movements, but doesn’t look a thing like you. And you’re warmer to Jon Snow than you are to him, so don’t pretend you aren’t aware of it.” When he doesn’t answer right away, she continues, “What happened?” And when he still doesn’t answer, she continues in exasperation, “Your family’s secret is safe with me, Lord Stark. I don’t care one way or the other about your sons. The man worrying me is Stannis Baratheon. He’s not just a boy and has a claim to the throne. If he takes the city, I think he’d kill even Mycella. So, how did the just-as-honorable Catelyn Stark end up with a bastard?”

Though it takes a moment, he eventually says, “I called her to King’s Landing right at the end of Robert’s Rebellion.  She was raped by a man in the Riverlands, right on her father’s land. Hadn’t told a soul she was pregnant, didn’t know if she’d be able to get pregnant again. He doesn’t know.”

Lord’s bastards can be legitimized, though a king’s can’t. After so many unwanted advances from her husband, Cersei can imagine what that must have been like. “Swear fealty to Joffrey and join the Night’s Watch,” she says again. “Let your daughters go home.” She won’t tell him until it matters that they can’t find Arya.

Before she can leave, he reaches out and grabs hold of her hand. “If something goes wrong,” he says, “keep them safe.”

Whether being King will be bad for Joffrey or not, she doesn’t doubt that he’ll let Ned Stark live and his daughters go home because he’s a Lannister, he should understand that a tamed wolf is better than a dead one. Even so, she gives him her word she’ll keep his children safe and doesn’t tell him Arya is lost.

 

 

Promising Walder Frey her children’s hands in marriage is unpleasant, but necessary. She wants her husband back, her daughters. In many ways, she doesn’t care what it takes to make that happen.

Expectedly, he’s delighted. “You say she’s eleven?” he says when Catelyn suggests Arya. “Good. She can have Waldron when she’s older.”

Waldron. Waldron, Walder, Walda. She’s never heard a family name so hideous before, but the Freys aren’t know for attractiveness in any sense of the term. “Is there anything else?” she asks because Lord Frey doesn’t settle for anything so meager.

“Take my son Olyvar to be your son’s personal squire. Given him a knighthood when all this is done. He can be useful for once in his life,” he answers. “I still have children and grandchildren I need to get rid of.  What of your older daughter? I don’t imagine her marriage with Joffrey Baratheon is—”

“She’s promised to Theon Greyjoy,” Catelyn cuts in, perhaps quicker than she should but her daughter has already had that arrangement broken once and if she marries Theon, she can stay in Winterfell.

Frey just waves his hand dismissively. “I don’t see why the sea is much better than a river if your daughter wants water instead of snow,” he says and she has to take a deep breath to hold down her anger. “So what I have left are a cripple, a six-year-old, and a bastard.”

“Jon took the black along with his uncle.”

“I’m not talking about Jon Snow, I’m talking about the boy outside my gates. I want a Stark, not a Tully and a no-name,” he says and she’s so shocked she doesn’t know what to say. “Oh, don’t look at me like that, Lady Catelyn. You were on my land. The boy’s too old to be your husband’s.”

This man has never even met Robb and he thinks he has the right to speak like this? The audacity of it all. “Having a child in eight months rather than nine is not unheard of is,” she says. “How dare you assume—my son is a Stark, not a Snow.”

With a low laugh, Frey says, “You’re very good at keeping secrets. I can be good at keeping secrets, too. Either Sansa marries my grandson Robert or you don’t cross. Do we have a deal?”

“Yes, I believe we do, Lord Frey.”

He grants Robb _Stark_ crossing and all but four hundred men. This is quite possibly the worst negotiation a war has ever seen.

Thank the gods her son didn’t come instead.

 

 

“And…Sansa has to marry his grandson Robert.”

“But Theon—”

“I’m sorry. That was the one he wanted most.”

Theon says it’s all right, but his face says it isn’t because this is the second insult he’s gotten in a row. Robb consents because he has to and this feels like a terrible way to start a war.

 

 

Despite finding out the dead can come to life and burning his hand, Jon’s day had been going relatively well, all things considered. But all it takes is Sam saying, “It’s your brother Robb,” and all the fears he’d kept hidden away since the day he took his oath come pouring out all at once.

“What?” he asks, sitting up straighter _._ “What about him?”

For once, Sam doesn’t soften the blow. “He’s heading south,” he answers, “to war.” Then, quickly, he does what he always does and tries to sound reassuring, which isn’t actually too good at. “All his bannermen are rallied to his side. They’ll keep him safe.”

Yes, and he has Theon too, Theon who promised to keep him alive, but that was before they knew there would be a war. “I should be there,” Jon says, turning. “I should be with him.”

“You aren’t going to try to run away, are you?” Sam says, clearly nervous. “We took our oaths, you can’t.”

Though Jon shakes his head, that might be exactly what he does. “Robb’s my little brother,” he says because he might be lying now, but when he does leave, he wants Sam to understand. “It’s my responsibility to keep him safe. I knew I should have left.”

Under the table, Ghost growls like he knows something’s wrong. “He’s Lord of the North, Jon,” his friend says. “If you desert, he’ll have to execute you.”

No, he won’t. Robb’s as honor bound as their father, but he wouldn’t do that, not to Jon, and the rest of the family would understand. He says, “You’re right,” because it’s better than saying he’s sorry.

 

 

No men return from the attack on Tywin Lannister’s camp, which means Robb sent two thousand men to their graves.

Now he’s got the Kingslayer in irons, nearly all eighteen thousand of the rest of his men still alive, and he sent Olyvar away to undress and scrub off the dirt and blood on his own. Mother calls on him not long after he gets himself in normal clothes and he’s still scrambling around looking for something to act as a bandage because he pressed with the rough cloth so hard he accidently broke the skin on his arm. She wasn’t meant to see, but she seems more resigned than surprised. “This is new,” she says tiredly, gazed focused on the scrape. “Leave it be, Robb. I’ll be back in a moment.”

She really is back in a moment, and returns with a whole roll of bandages. “I was trying to get the blood off,” he tells her. “It was an accident.”

“I thought as much.” Then she wraps it for him instead of letting him do it himself. “This wasn’t your fault.”

“I know, Mother,” he says and he does, but that doesn’t stop him from feeling guilt for it. “War has casualties. We’ll have more.”

As she knots the bandage, she says, “That’s true, which is why you need to be more careful with yourself. All these men—you’re their lord. But that doesn’t mean you can do everything yourself, or that you have to. I’ve never fought a war, but I’ve lived through several, and believe me when I say no matter how impossible it sounds now, two thousand dead in your first real battle against the Lannisters is much lower than it would have been had you gone a different way.”

Even though, objectively, he knows this is true, two thousand still feels like an impossibly high number. “I’m doing better,” he tells her. “You can ask Theon if you don’t believe me. I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

“Robb, you’re my son, and I love you,” Mother says. “Please, _please_ let the Frey boy help you next time. Or if you don’t trust him, there has to be someone else you do. Accident or not, you can’t wash away your enemies’ blood with your own. All it does is create a bigger mess.”

Somehow, he survived the battle without injury. Though he might think she’s seeing this as something more serious than it is, he does agree it’s ridiculous that he managed to hurt _himself_ in his own tent _after_ the fighting was through. “I’m sorry,” he says sincerely. “It wouldn’t happen again.”

“Good. See that it won’t.”

           

 

Sansa cries, messy and unashamed, and Cersei pretends her body is only shaking because of the sobbing girl in her arms.

 

 

After Lord Stark dies, Theon is by Robb’s side so often he knows under less depressing circumstances rumors would already be circulating about the two of them. But he promised Jon, and he’s going to honor that promise while he can.

Robb doesn’t talk much over the next few days, which is good, because Theon doesn’t feel like talking much either. Though he’s not of House Stark, he’s smart enough to know a boy in his situation normally would have been treated worse in his new “home,” not better. And as Ned Stark personally took time out of his day several years in a row to each him archery when he could have left him as a common servant, Theon thinks that is definitely considered “better.” This death is hard for him, too.

The worst part of it all is, the Starks know it. They don’t say it, but they show it in the little things they do, and they’re so considerate of him even in their own grief that he thinks he might hate them for it.

 

 

Talking back to the King had not been Sansa’s brightest moment, but despite the bruises on her cheeks and the blood on her lips, she doesn’t regret it.

“It may not seem it now, little dove,” Queen Cersei says not a half hour later, passing her a goblet of wine she doesn’t touch, “but staying betrothed to Joffrey is the safest place for you in King’s Landing.”

If the Queen really wanted her safe, she’d be gone from here by now, headed back towards her brother’s camp. “I love His Grace with all my heart,” she answers, knowing she should get used to it quickly if it’s her last line of defense. “I wouldn’t have it any other way, Your Grace.”

When Queen Cersei smiles, it’s dry and humorless and even a little sad. “Sansa,” she says, “we’re women. Wolf, lioness, fish, it doesn’t matter—we’re all little birds with clipped wings in the end. But if those wings are going to be clipped somewhere where you’re in danger, it’s better to find yourself in a position right on the cusp of power. Anything you face would be a hundred times worse without it.”

“You said the cusp,” Sansa says. “Why?”

“Because if you’re married, then your husband can get in your bed by right. If you’re a traitors daughter’s without protection, it’s nearly the same thing.”

Sansa drinks down half the glass in one gulp.

 

 

Ned’s dead and the boy who’s not even his son is declared King. He turns, ever so slightly, to look at her while his men swear fealty and chant, and she gives him any trace of a smile she can. He’s clearly terrified, as is she, because she can hear the chants spreading through camp and Walder Frey knows her secret.

The world is filled with small jokes and ironies, but she’s never seen one so bold as this.

“The King in the North!” the men cry and all they’ve done is put a second bastard son on an imagined throne.

 

 

So the Starks think they tried to kill that boy of theirs—Bran, Brandon, whatever his name is. Now all the anger makes more sense. “He fell,” Jaime tells Lady Stark. “If I wanted him dead, why would I run to get you immediately instead of leaving him there for someone to find hours later?”

“But the killer had your brother’s dagger,” she says.

“Tyrion lost that stupid knife ages ago. He’s too caught up in his books to worry about a weapon that nice,” Jaime answers, and the rock tumbles from her hand. “Get some sleep, Lady Stark. It’s going to be a long war.”

And it will be a long war, he thinks, because if someone was smart enough to use Tyrion’s dagger on the boy, then that means someone wanted the Starks and Lannisters to fight. The King’s death simply escalated it to war.

Suddenly Jaime’s imprisonment became considerably less boring.

 

 

“Sam—Sam saw the note,” Jon says, stepping down from his horse. “Do you really think my brother would kill me? I belong with Robb.”

Sam says, “But we’re your brothers now,” and Jon’s tried so hard to explain it before, so his friend should understand it—Robb’s his _little_ brother, his responsibility. “If they find out you’re gone—”

“I’ve got the night’s ride on them already, or would have if you hadn’t stopped me, but they’ll kill you if you come after me,” he says. “Now please, just let me leave.”

“You took the oath, you can’t leave,” Grenn insists. “You said the words.”

“I don’t care about—”

Then they start reciting the oath and he wants to cover his ears but he can’t because that won’t do a thing, so instead he says, “If I don’t do this, I’ll never be able to live with myself. Now go back before I knock out all of you. My brother’s King in the North, I’m not going to die.”

When Pyp tries, “You can’t know that for certain,” Jon answers, “Yes, I can. Because I’m his older brother, so I’m always right,” and his friend must have used that excuse himself at least once in his life, because he quiets instantly.

Finally, they let him go.

 

 

Sometimes his sister has this uncanny ability to act like two people at once. Like now, for example, when she goes from ordering the Small Council to close the gates to the peasants to ordering the entirety of the small council out to saying, “I thought I’d convinced him to let Ned Stark join the Night’s Watch. He _said_ he’d let Ned Stark join the Night’s Watch.”

Nearly all his life, there had been something a little… _off_ about his nephew and Tyrion may not be around Cersei often, but he knows on a certain level she’s afraid of him. Apparently she has good reason. “Well, the whole North has risen up against us,” he answers, and her eyes are averted. “That bit of theater will haunt our family for a generation.”

“Robb Stark is a child.”

“Who’s won every battle he’s fought,” Tyrion says, exasperated, because that’s better for a Lannister than to be impressed. “Do you understand we’re losing the war?”

Looking to him now, she asks, “What do you know about warfare?”

With complete honesty, he says, “Nothing. But I know people, and I spent some time with the boy’s older brother. He learned from his father and he’s smart, but he’s unstable. Smart and unstable is almost as bad as foolish and unstable—he’s dangerous, child or not.” He’s certainly not his maternal aunt, not that sort of unstable, and he’s not mad, but if the way Jon Snow spoke about him is any indication, he tries too hard to please everyone. Under normal circumstances, Tyrion would say that guarantees his war effort will collapse, but not when he’s already shown that much of an aptitude for it.

 If Cersei is convinced, she doesn’t show it. “Joffrey is King,” she says.

“Joffrey is King,” he repeats.

“You’re here to advise him.”

“I’m here to advise him.” Again, his sister looks away. “And if the King listens, he might just get his Uncle Jaime back.”

There’s a clear pause before she asks, “How?”

So the rumors are true. Tyrion always had his suspicions. “You love your children,” he answers. “It’s your one redeeming quality—that and your cheekbones. The Starks love their children as well, and we have two of them.”

“One,” she says. “Arya is gone. Disappeared during the execution. I’d have a trade, but Father would have my head for it, so until then Sansa Stark is under my protection.”

His sister, protecting someone? And a Stark at that? “Why?” he says, doubtful.

Apparently Cersei is just full of surprises today, though, because she says, “I promised Ned Stark if something went wrong I would. Then Joffrey had him executed.”

Why would she possibly—oh. _Oh._ “You asked Stark for help.”

“You and I don’t get along,” she says bluntly. “Let’s not pretend we do. But I’ll give you this one piece of advice anyway: whatever you do, don’t trust Petyr Baelish.”

She stands to leave before he can answer. If he didn’t know any better, he’d almost say she cared.

 

 

Talking to the Kingslayer alone is something he should have done some time ago, but his men declaring him King in the North forced him to delay a few things. The raven from the Wall saying Jon deserted only made things worse as the news circulated within the day, but no one who’s ever met the two of them seems remotely surprised. By laws of Westeros, Robb has to behead his own brother.

Good thing the North is no longer part of Westeros.

When he enters the pen, Jamie Lannister lifts his head. “King in the North,” he says. “I keep expecting you to leave me at one castle or the next for safekeeping, but you drag me around from camp to camp. Have you grown fond of me, Stark, is that it? I’ve never seen you with a girl.”

He’s easier to ignore than Robb expected. “If I left you with one of my bannermen,” he answers, “your father would know within a fortnight. My bannerman would receive a raven with a message: release my son and you’ll be rich beyond your dreams, refuse and your house will destroyed root and stem.”

“You don’t trust the loyalty of the men following you into battle?”

“Oh, I trust them with my life,” he says. “Just not with yours.”

Lifting an eyebrow, the Kingslayer says, “Smart boy,” and when his shoulders tense, he must see it, because he continues, “What’s wrong? Don’t like being called boy? Insulted?”

As his seventeenth name day only just passed the day he found out about his father’s death, no, he really doesn’t like being called boy, but Jaime Lannister doesn’t need to know that. Grey Wind comes around from the back of the cage, and now it’s the man’s turn to visibly tense. “You insult yourself, Kingslayer,” Robb says. “You’ve been defeated by a boy. Held captive by a boy. Maybe even be killed by a boy the same age as your son.”

That’s enough to get his attention. “I’m a member of the Kingsguard,” Lannister says. “I have no sons.”

“Stannis Baratheon sent ravens to all the high lords of Westeros,” Robb tells him as Grey Wind enters. “King Joffrey Baratheon is neither a true King, nor a true Baratheon. He’s your bastard son.”

Lannister’s eyes move from Grey Wind to Robb, but the fear is there. “If that’s true then Stannis is the rightful King. How convenient for him.”

“My mother found gold hairs in the tower Bran fell from,” he says, and curls his fingers in his direwolf’s fur, “which I think means you were up there with the Queen. How did my brother _really_ fall?”

“It was an accident.” At least he doesn’t deny he was there. “Your brother saw us, he was surprised as any ten-year-old would be, and misplaced his footing. Cersei stayed with him and I ran to get help as fast as I could. Killing children wasn’t our intention for that visit. If you plan on asking about the dagger, that wasn’t us either.”

That’s about the same thing as he told Mother, though he hadn’t mentioned Bran catching him and the Queen. This is potentially about to be a lot worse. “And Jon Arryn?”

“I thought that was a very convenient fever.”

“We happen to know it was poison.” For a moment, neither of them speak. Then Robb adds, “Even if you’re telling the truth, your son still killed my father. My sisters are still captive in King’s Landing, and now my men asked for cession. This war won’t end.”

Like his men when they heard of Jon, Lannister doesn’t seem surprised. “No, but it does mean someone wanted us to fight,” he says. “Three victories don’t make you a conqueror, Stark.”

Grey Wind growls. “It’s better than three defeats,” he answers, tightening his grip in his direwolf’s fur. “I’m sending one of your cousins down to King’s Landing with my peace terms.”

“Do you think my father is going to negotiate with you?” Lannister asks. “You don’t know him very well.”

With a smile, he says, “No, but he’s starting to know me,” and the Kingslayer isn’t as good at hiding his fear as he thinks he is.

 

 

“I heard you terrorized Lord Baelish today, dear sister.”

She reclines in her chair with a glass of wine and a smirk. “Power is power, little brother,” she answers.

As he pours his own glass, Tyrion says, “Knowledge is power, too. I do believe with Jaime’s swordplay, my intelligence, and your cheekbones, the three of us could rule the world.”

“A toast, then, to impossible dreams.”

“Or at least short lived ones.”

They knock glasses and this is the closest to a good sibling relationship Tyrion has ever had.

 

 

For a while now, Theon has been rolling around the idea in his head of calling upon his father’s help even though they haven’t seen each other now since he was eight. “A word, Your Grace?” he says once everyone is gone, in a way just to annoy his friend because no one has the right to be this anxious all the time.

It works. “You don’t need to call me that when no one’s around.”

With a smile, Theon says, “It’s not so bad, once you get used to it.”

“At least someone’s gotten used to it,” Robb says, and watches the men mill around the camp.

And because he’s so anxious all the time, Theon’s nervous to even suggest this. But Jon’s coming, so it’s not like he’ll be alone, he tells himself. “The Lannisters will reject your terms, you know.”

Robb glances at him. “Of course they are.”

“You can fight them in the field all you like,” he says. “We won’t beat them until we take King’s Landing. We can’t take King’s Landing without ships.” As he goes to suggest his father, though, his resolve wanes. Robb’s King in the North now, he’s clearly getting worse no matter how well he seems to actually fit the job, and Theon can barely keep up with him on his own. Jon was never as good at watching out as Theon is, something he takes at least a small amount of pride in since they aren’t even related. So he changes tactics last moment and continues instead, “Renly and Stannis both have ships, now that Renly’s married into the Reach, and we don’t need to care about rightful lines of succession anymore. Renly will be more likely to agree with your terms than Stannis.”

Looking back out at his men again, Robb says, “I wish my mother had made a different deal. You’d be better than any Frey or Baratheon or Lannister or whoever else wanted Sansa’s hand.”

When she hugged Theon goodbye, she’d been crying, so they better not kill her in King’s Landing because he refuses to have that as his last memory of her. Jon had been angry, Arya relatively indifferent, but Sansa was crying. He hadn’t loved her romantically, no, because she was too young for that, because he might’ve been able to one day. “Better than you marrying a Frey,” he says instead. “Imagine having a Frey as Queen in the North, Robb. She’d die of the winter within the fortnight.”

“You can’t know that.” Theon shrugs and Robb adds, “I’ve heard some of the men here say unsettling things about Stannis. I don’t know much about either brother, but Westeros deserves better than Joffrey and someone who thinks he rules by divine right is almost as bad.”

“So Renly it is?”

“Renly it is.”

Robb says he’ll have to send his mother again, since the Stormlands are too far south for him to go himself and any lord would draw too much attention. For Lady Stark’s sake, who already had to go to King’s Landing before Bran awoke, Theon hopes Jon returns before she leaves.

 

 

Arriving in the Riverlands took longer than Jon liked but shorter than expected, and he catches Mother right before she leaves. She gives him a hug so tight he can’t properly breathe, but it’s nothing compared to the greeting Robb gives him.

“I told you not to go,” he says once they let go of each other. “Do you agree now that you should have listened?”

Oh, Robb. He’s a mess, with his curls in disarray and a smudge of dirt under his eye that Mother would have scrubbed at relentlessly had they been back at Winterfell, but at least he looks healthy. For once Theon did as he was told. “It was a terrible idea,” Jon answers. “I just wish I’d made it here sooner. Where exactly is Mother going?”

His little brother explains that she’s going to the Stormlands to work out terms with Renly Baratheon. “Hopefully when she comes back, we’ll have ships,” he adds. “Then we can take King’s Landing and show Joffrey that some kings don’t need servants to do their beheading for them.”

“Any news of Sansa and Arya since I left the Wall?” He shakes his head. “We’ll get them back safe, Robb. We’ll go home.”

“I’m legitimizing you by royal decree,” he says. “I have the power to do that now. If I die, you’re next in line.”

Their line of succession is officially more backwards than the Lannister-Baratheon one if he goes through with this. “Is there any way to convince you this is an invitation to the gods to kill you?” Jon asks.

Again, Robb shakes his head. “It’s you or Bran, who’s back in Winterfell. He can’t lead an army. Mother promised Sansa to a Frey boy and we don’t know where Arya is. And regardless, it changes nothing. There’s no one I’d rather have. Even as a child I knew that.”

They’re still children compared to most players in this war, Jon knows. Robb’s younger by at least fifteen years than everyone on the war council except him and Theon. “I’d be lousy without you,” he says.

“I’ve _been_ lousy without you,” Robb answers. “Maybe that just means we should stay together for a while longer. Is that good enough for you?”

Jon doesn’t smile much, but he’s smiling now. “I deserted for you, Robb. There’s no need to question that.”

Then Theon bursts in without so much as announcing himself, cheeks flushed and breathing hard, and somehow he only just found out Jon came back. They’ll be fighting again within the day, but for now Jon is willing to accept the peace.

 

 

The capital is a miserable place, filled with liars and backstabbers, and Sansa is unsure who to trust. All she knows for certain is that she can’t trust Joffrey. The Queen is a more confusing situation. But Sansa does know she isn’t the only Joffrey is unnecessarily cruel to, and Queen Cersei at least pretends to be kind, so after she hears about the incident in the throne room, she searches her out.

When she finds her, the Queen is alone in the small council room. “No matter who your children are or what they do, you will love them, little dove,” she says, and motions for Sansa to take a seat at the table. “Love no one but your children. The less people you love, the less weaknesses you have.”

Giving advice is something she seems to do a lot. Before Father died, they barely spoke. “Shouldn’t you love your husband?”

“You’re young, you don’t have children yet, so you can’t understand,” the Queen answers, “but if it came between your children and your husband, you’d have to choose. I never loved Robert. You’ll never love Joffrey. But you’ll love his children and if you’re smart, Sansa, you’ll raise them alone.”

Sansa can’t imagine having Joffrey’s children, but that really is good advice. If she’s forced to have them, then she will protect them from his influence the best she can.

 

 

“I’m used to boys,” Arya tells Gendry hours after she confesses who she really is. “I have four brothers, and a house ward. Theon only started acting more proper once Mother and Father said he was to marry Sansa. Then King Robert came and said she was to marry Joffrey instead and Father was to be Hand, so we went to King’s Landing.”

As no one was supposed to find out, she never thought she’d talk about this, but just saying their names makes her feel better. “Last I heard, the North had started a war,” Gendry says, adjusting the way he lies so he’s facing her. They’re a little ways off from the group, hidden by bushes from sight if someone were on the King’s Road. “I heard lots of things selling weapons and armor. You’d laugh at someone of what people say about your brother.”

There’s a pressure building up behind her eyes that she hasn’t felt since the first nights after her father’s death. “Tell me,” she says. “What do they say?”

“Different things,” he answers. “Everyone seems to call him the Young Wolf, though. What’s his real name? Robert? Robin?”

“Robb.” Northerners called him the Young Wolf, too.

Gendry nods slightly and continues, “I’ve heard men say he rides to battle on the back of a giant direwolf. That’s the sigil of your house, right? Some also say he can turn into a wolf when he wants. Even heard a few say he can’t be killed.”

Two years ago Robb was nearly anonymous, still trailing after Jon and getting chided by Father for “not knowing his limit.” Arya never thought she’d hear about him going to war, let alone leading the army to do it. “How old are you, Gendry?” she asks, and reaches up to rub her eyes before the tears can fall.

“Seventeen, Milady,” he answers, and she kicks him in the leg. “Ow!”

“Shh.” Even in the half-light cast by the moon, she can still see his glare. “Robb’s seventeen, too,” she says and for the next couple of weeks, Jon is too. “You can die. So why are people saying he can’t?”

“You mean you haven’t heard from anyone yet? He captured Jaime Lannister.”

That almost, _almost_ makes hiding as a boy surrounded by annoying boys worth it.

 

 

There’s a single moment where Alton is alone, and that’s when Cersei corners him.

As she pulls open his outer layer to slip the letter into his inside pocket, she says, “Give this to Robb Stark and Robb Stark alone. Mention it to no one. And if he finds the seal broken, I’ve given him explicit permission to remove your head from your shoulders, do you understand, cousin?”

Eyes wide, he nods. “Yes, Your Grace,” he answers, and she smiles.

“Remember, Alton,” she says, pushing him in the proper direction, “Lannisters bow to no one but each other.”

 

 

When Robb legitimized Jon, a few men rolled their eyes, but it was expected. If the King dies in war, he needs an heir, and his older brother learned along with him, so he’s a more logical choice than Bran. Those who don’t know them don’t understand, but those that do just congratulate Jon on becoming a Stark instead of a Snow and Robb hears Lord Karstark tell Lord Glover that they were inseparable enough already.

This is quickly shaping up to be possibly the most ridiculous war ever fought. “I hadn’t expected to be so…readily accepted,” Jon says later, which Robb was thinking, too. “Perhaps because Mother likes me?”

“When you first showed up, some of the lowborn men thought you _were_ a Stark,” Theon says. “Just the younger brother. Bet that got straightened out quick enough. There’s more gossip here than in the maid quarters.”

For the first time in a while, Robb feels relaxed, or at least something close to it. His men are happy, his friend is happy, his brother is most certainly happy even though he tries not to show it. He thinks that for once he definitely made the right decision. “We have a reputation of being a strange family already,” he says, leaning back in his chair, “but at least we aren’t as strange as the Lannisters. Nor the Baratheons. How in Seven Hells did they rule Westeros together for seventeen years?”

“Well, the Lannisters will be uprooted soon, and so far Renly doesn’t seem like such a freak,” Theon says. “I hear his wife is really something else.”

“I hear he has eyes for her brother,” Jon adds and yes, Robb’s men really do gossip more than maids.

“As long as he gives me ships, I don’t care which one he’s fucking,” Robb says and Theon laughs while Jon frowns. “What? As long as the people of Westeros aren’t treated terribly, I don’t care who’s on the Iron Throne anymore. Just about the only good thing to come out of getting declared King.”

How anyone would _want_ to be a king is something Robb doesn’t understand—he promised himself he would be a good one, but most days he can’t tell one emotion from the other, which he knows from past experience isn’t a good thing. Maester Luwin told Father it could change his behavior to erratic at best and volatile at worst and from what he’d seen of this “affliction” before, it only became worse with adolescence. Robb wasn’t supposed to have heard but he had anyway.

So had Jon. Which means Robb doesn’t understand how his brother can say, “Don’t make it sound as though you’re terrible.”

Back before it became too corrupt to properly function, the Westeros system worked well enough, so Robb is going to keep the small council and both Robb and Theon are going to be on it. Most days they’re the ones he talks to, anyway. “If you were a terrible king, we wouldn’t be winning every battle,” Theon says. “Besides, your men _made_ you King, you’re not the two Baratheons who _decided_ they should be, those arrogant fuckers. How long do you think it will take before Stannis’ new religious order gets him killed?”

“To be fair, he does have the best claim.”

“He still thinks a god decided it’s his right.”

Outside, a celebration for Jon’s legitimization continues on and the three stick inside Robb’s tent with Grey Wind and Ghost, who lie asleep on the floor, talking about Stannis and Renly and Joffrey fucking Baratheon. The world’s thrown to chaos, but he could be alone and that is considerably worse.

 

 

“I just want to see her safe.”

“The safest place is for Mycella is by my side!”

“As long as Joffrey is King, we both know that isn’t true.”

Cersei sits heavily in her chair, head cradled in her hands. “She’s my only girl,” she says. “You can’t use her as some bargaining piece. _I_ was some bargaining piece and look at what happened to me!”

Unfortunately, they’re Lannisters and they have no friends. Father burned through almost every relation they had and nearly the whole of Westeros has risen against them. “Of everyone with their eye on King’s Landing,” Tyrion says, “Robb Stark is the only one I can imagine keeping your children alive because he’s young and he’s stupid and he’s noble. But what about Stannis? Renly? Daenerys Targaryen if she manages to cross the Narrow Sea? The world hates us, Cersei. Dorne might, too, but the Martells are still our allies and I’d rather see Mycella with a Martell than with Lysa Arryn’s son. The only Greyjoy man left is that Theon boy and he’s more Winterfell than Pyke. Why would you want to keep your daughter here?”

“Because you didn’t send for a man to kill Bran Stark and Jaime and I didn’t murder Jon Arryn,” she snaps, which is disconnected enough that he doesn’t know how to answer. “If our spies are right, then Renly Baratheon and Catelyn Stark are negotiating to join forces—together that’s the Stormlands, the North, the Reach, and the Riverlands. Stannis has Dragonstone. Ned Stark thought I killed Jon Arryn, which means someone gave him reason to suspect I did. I may not be an expert in war and I may not ‘know people’ the way you do, Tyrion, but I think that means someone wanted the Starks and the Lannisters to fight. What if that person is in Dorne? Mycella stays.”

In the Eyrie, Lady Catelyn _had_ mentioned something or another about plotting to kill her sister’s husband, but Tyrion was too preoccupied by his lost dagger found as a murder weapon to pay it much mind. “That someone could be one of Stark’s allies,” he says because a boy like that will be quicker to trust than anyone as jaded as the Lannisters. “Whoever it is, though, finding them won’t end this war if that’s what you’re planning.”

Crossing her arms, Cersei says, “You’re right. The world hates us. That means it could be anyone. I don’t even have enough people I trust to discreetly investigate five suspects let alone all of them. Which is why Mycella stays.”

No one from Dorne was in King’s Landing when he lost his dagger, so it would have been hard for them to have it. Even so, he agrees that she stays because for once his sister might actually have a point.

 

 

Robb begins to tense, and Jon puts himself firmly between his brother and Roose Bolton. “We bring the North with us where we go,” he says before Robb can intervene. “You’d best remember that before you try to suggest breaking our laws again.”

Smiling, Bolton answers, “Yes, My Lord. I apologize for the disrespect, Your Grace.”

“You’re dismissed, all of you,” Robb says and though several look as though they want to argue, they do leave. Once they’re gone, he adds, “I could have handled that myself, Jon.”

With a shrug, Jon says, “Just because you’re King doesn’t mean you have to do everything yourself. That includes keeping men like Bolton off your back.”

Though he says nothing in protest, Robb’s frown is answer enough. “ _Flaying_ prisoners,” he says in clear distaste. “Who does he think we are, the Lannisters? Father outlawed it for a reason.”

To be fair, he did ignore the law that said Jon had to be executed, so perhaps doing it to “uphold the rules” sounds too hypocritical. Sometimes Robb’s way of thinking is difficult to understand, but Jon doubts his brother even notices. Just like how morally wrong flaying is should be enough not to do it, but he learned at the Wall that not everyone is as honorable as Father was. “I don’t trust him,” he says, because Bolton’s always given him a bad feeling to begin with. “Even if he’s not trying to undermine the war effort or anything, I just don’t trust him as a person.”

“Well, I wasn’t planning on having him in any appointed positions back in Winterfell, I can tell you that,” Robb says. “We should separate; I want everyone alive to receive medical attention.”

A while ago Theon said Robb’s such a good person it would get him killed one day. As Jon agrees with most of his decisions because it’s what their father taught them, he doesn’t understand how that’s a bad thing.

 

 

The Queen gives her a salve to quicken the healing of the bruises Joffrey gave her. It came from her room, not Maester Pycelle. Sansa wonders how many times King Robert hit her and if that’s why her hands don’t shake.

 

 

 Littlefinger has just left when a voice calls, “My Lady, may I enter?”

It’s La—Queen Margaery, Catelyn realizes. “Yes, Your Grace,” she answers, composing herself just in time for the girl to pull open the tent flaps because this is the first she’s heard of Arya and she’s unsure whether or not she should believe this old friend who betrayed her husband’s trust. “How may I help you, Your Grace?”

Her dress drapes off her shoulders and hugs tight at her hips. If this is an effort to get Renly to notice her, then her beauty is going to waste. Catelyn would tell her if they knew each other well enough that she would not appear rude. “Lord Baelish was asking too many questions,” Queen Margaery says, leaning back against the desk. “I needed somewhere to hide until he stops with his curiosity.”

Maybe this is a sign from the gods old or new not to trust Littlefinger. “This is your camp, Your Grace,” Catelyn says. “If you wish to escape a man’s prying, the guest tent is yours.”

The girl smiles. “Thank you, My Lady,” she says, inclining her head. “Tell me, while we have this short time together, why did your son decide to be King? My husband is a Baratheon, he needs no explanation.”

“Robb didn’t declare himself King in the North, his men decided it for him,” Catelyn answers and beyond her fear the first night, she really is very proud of him for this. He’s not a conqueror, he’s a Stark, and none of these other self-elevated kings can say it was a position given, not taken. “I’m here as an ally, not an enemy; he doesn’t want the Iron Throne.”

"That’s the first good thing I’ve heard all week,” Queen Margaery says. “I feel as though everywhere I look there’s a new enemy.”

She’s young. Robb’s age, or Jon’s at most, Catelyn suspects. The Tyrells are so far south that as a married-in Stark, she didn’t pay much mind to them. “That’s war, Your Grace,” she tells her, not unkindly. “Enemies small and large appear from every corner—but so do friends.”

Again, Queen Margaery smiles, and then, to Catelyn’s surprise, curtseys. “I’ll see you in the morning, My Lady,” she says. “I think we’ll be very good friends in this war.”

Sansa would like her, Catelyn thinks as she bids her goodnight, and the thought of her oldest daughter tugs painfully at her heart.

 

 

Margaery wants to be a true queen, and a living one at that, and from what she learned from Catelyn Stark and other rumors in the days leading to her husband’s death, she thinks the “Young Wolf” has a very real chance of winning this war. His men’s pure devotion will be a more powerful motivator than the pay the Kingsguard receives from the Lannisters. So when she returns to High Garden, she goes to her father and Loras and convinces them to ally with Robb Stark, not Joffrey Baratheon.

The North will be colder than the Reach, but inside the castle she’ll survive the winter.

 

 

Together, Cersei, Tyrion, and Bronn concoct a plan using wildfire.

Father would be _so_ surprised if he knew they were finally learned how to share.

 

 

Hiding in plain sight from Petyr Baelish is difficult enough, but Arya has to struggle not to turn around when the man says, “The Tyrells have headed north to join forces with the Starks.”

Lord Tywin holds out his cup for more wine and Arya twists in to pour it, still facing away. “The Reach, the Riverlands, and the North together against us,” he says. “Robb Stark is proving more of a pest than I thought he would be.”

Of course he is, she thinks with pride cutting through her fear of discovery, because this is _Robb_ , who used to put her to bed when Mother was unavailable. Robb who’s seventeen and rumors say can’t die and gives Tywin Lannister sleepless nights. “There’s something else,” Baelish says. “On your senate’s directive I met with Catelyn Stark.”

“Why?”  Arya fumbles with the pitcher in her hand and Lord Tywin adds, “Girl, more wine for Lord Baelish.”

Though it’s hard, she manages to keep herself calm. “We had an interesting proposal concerning her daughters,” Baelish answers, and tries to get a look at her face. “Unfortunately, it didn’t take, but I learned while there that Robb Stark legitimized his bastard brother. He now has an heir who could pick up where he left off if he dies.”

_Jon?_ Jon was legitimized? Jon Stark instead of Jon Snow? For a moment, she feels like a child again, and didn’t understand why everyone acted surprised that Mother loves Jon just as much as the rest of them. “I thought the boy was at the Wall,” says Lord Tywin.

“He came running back to his family once he heard about his father,” the other man says. “The two brothers are very…dependent on each other.”

That’s when Arya’s hand slips on the pitcher handle, and it clatters to the table next to Baelish’s arm. “I’m sorry, My Lord,” she says quickly when she grabs a rag to start cleaning up, trying to hide her face, and she’s never liked it when people say things like that about her brothers. It’s not Robb’s fault he’s like that, said Father.

Waving his hand in dismissal, Lord Tywin says, “That will be all, girl. Leave us,” and as she exits she hears him say, “All this changes is that now we have two Stark boys to kill instead of one.”

She still has two names left for Jaqen H’ghar and Tywin Lannister will undoubtedly be one of them. All she has to do is wait for the right time to say it.

 

 

Her son may not care about what happens to Sansa, but she promised Ned Stark she’d keep his daughter safe. And now there’s a riot in the streets and the girl’s missing and Joffrey is doing nothing.

“Go find Sansa,” she orders the Hound because none of these men care about some fourteen-year-old girl possibly about to be raped and killed, but he’ll listen. “Be quick about it, Clegane.”

For nearly half past the hour, Cersei waits safe inside the castle walls until a handmaiden, not the Hound, returns her. She’s shaking and she’s pale, but a wound on her neck is bandaged. “Did they hurt you, Sansa?” she asks carefully, and when the girl shakes her head she knows she got her point across: she wasn’t talking about scrapes and bruises. “Good. That’s—you should get some rest. It’s been a long day.”

Regardless of what her father and son think, she _will_ get this girl back to her family. And if she’s lucky, she’ll have Jaime back in return.

 

 

Knowing all eighteen thousand men by name is impossible, but Robb knows everyone that he comes in contact with frequently. He makes it a point to ask how they’re doing, what they did before the war, if they have wives and children or anyone to return to. In Winterfell, Father was always the sort of lord the people felt comfortable talking to and he doesn’t see why being a king should make that any different. And, besides that, learning about people is interesting, and provides a break from the everyday heaviness of the war.

When Mother comes back from the Stormlands with an armored woman at her back, he’s speaking to a man from Hornwood whose son couldn’t use his legs like Bran, except the little boy was crippled before he learned to walk. He excuses himself when he sees her and after they hug, he says, “I hadn’t thought to see you today. What happened with Lord Renly?”

Mother explains about the shadow creature and how only minutes earlier they agreed upon an alliance. Brienne, the woman she came with, believes it to be Stannis. “We did get something from this, though,” she says when she finishes and they walk off to find Jon. “The Tyrells want an alliance with us. They should be marching north as we speak.”

During one of those times in Winterfell when he stopped sleeping, he learned as much as he could about each Great House in Westeros. If the Tyrells call the ships of their bannermen, their navy should equal the royal fleet. “And in return?” he asks, because even before the war he knew nothing ever came for free.

“If you agree to their terms,” she answers, “then you’re to marry Lady Margaery. I feel as though all I do lately is marry off my children.”

“For this one marriage, they support us in this war and then later as a free nation?” he says. “They won’t try to see Lady Margaery on the Iron Throne?”

In the end, if a marriage will get him this army, then marry he will. “Lord Mace’s terms stated that he’ll join forces with the North, though because of the distance between our lands he would like to stay part of Westeros after the war. Lady Margaery will be Queen in the North, as a separate and independent state. Along with the banners rides Ser Loras, Lady Margaery, and their grandmother.”

Lady Olenna Redwyne is her name, if Robb remembers correctly. Margaery’s mother is Alerie and other than Loras, she has two brothers Garlan and Willas. “I’ll consent to those terms,” he says, because he needs those ships and his men. “Did you at least get a look at her?”

With a laugh, Mother says, “Oh, Robb. Don’t you worry, Lady Margaery is _very_ beautiful.”

“Th—that wasn’t what I—”

She pats his shoulder. “I grew up with Edmure, Robb,” she says with a smile. “As my son, you don’t need to explain anything to me.”

To his immense relief, Jon finds them a moment later because Robb doesn’t think he’s been this mortified in years.

 

 

Lord Tywin, as it turns out, noticed her reaction to Littlefinger, but he waits until after she returns from giving _her_ food back to the kitchens to ask her about it. “You knew him, and you were afraid of him,” he says after telling her to sit down again and she begins scrambling for a lie. “Why?”

It’s too hard to think of anything elaborate and believable, so she says, “My father died in King’s Landing while trading and I was orphaned. He found me, tried to convince me to work in one of his brothels, and I didn’t want to. He didn’t like that.”

“So you disguised yourself as a boy and ran away.” She nods, hopes it’s believable enough, and he puts down his glass. “Clever girl. If he comes this way again, I can go without a cup barer for a few hours.”

One thing that terrifies her is that Lord Tywin is awful to just about everyone, but he has moments of not being so terrible to her and then turns around compares her to the Queen. Arya doesn’t want to be compared to the Queen. She doesn’t want to be like _any_ Lannister that ever lived.

“Thank you, My Lord.”

This is what Arya Stark wants: Home.

 

 

“In front of everyone she tore the paper in half. Then she gave me this with directions to hand to you and you alone, Your Grace.”

Robb accepts the paper with shaking hands and rips open the unbroken seal. All it takes is for him to read on line before he says, “Out, everyone. Theon, please go find my mother. Lord Karstark, get him food while men build him a pen.”

Only the fact that the men are still around keeps Theon and Jon from asking if he’s all right, he knows, but they all leave a moment later, wary, his friend along with them. “What does it say?” Jon asks once they’re all gone. “Robb—hands in front of you.”

When he’s worried or anxious, he has a habit of pulling on his hair; he hadn’t even noticed he’d moved to do so. The letter reads,

            _My cousin comes baring my council terms, not my own. Despite acting as Queen Regent,_ _the negations are not mine alone. I can promise you nothing, but I will tell you                   that we do not have Arya.  Sansa is not unharmed, but she is as safe as can be managed in the capital. If I can return her to you, even without your other sister, I expect my            brother in return. We did not harm your brother Bran, nor did we have any part in the murder of Jon Arryn. Arya we can do nothing for, but return Jaime and we will search           for whomever put us against each other from the inside. You have no reason to trust me and I have no reason to trust you, but I ask that if you take King’s Landing, you                leave Mycella and Tommen alive. Asking the same for Joffrey is asking too much._

_If this seal is broken, execute Alton Lannister by order of Queen Regent Cersei Baratheon of Westeros._

and Robb feels sick. He hands it over wordlessly to Jon and Theon enters with Mother.

“Is it true?” she says as Theon pulls shut the tent flaps. “Have you received a letter from the Queen? What does it say?”

Thankfully, Jon reads it instead of asking him to, though his brother voice chokes when he says the words “‘Arya we can do nothing for.’” Mother sits, hand to her chest, and “Jaime Lannister up and admitted to Robb that they aren’t ‘just’ brother and sister,” Theon says because he doesn’t always think before he speaks, but sometimes that’s necessary. “I don’t see why she would lie if she wanted him back that badly.”

“Theon’s right,” Robb says. “If this is a lie and she gives us Sansa, then Sansa would be able to tell us if Arya was still there. This letter makes it clear she’ll be returned first.”

“And behind Lord Tywin’s back,” Jon adds, reading over the letting again. “Did she really expect us to kill a couple of children?”

With a soft sigh, Mother says, “Her father ordered to have all the Targaryen children murdered in their sleep. Why would she think anyone is different?”

_Sansa is not unharmed, but she is as safe as can be managed._ If this means what Robb thinks it means, then perhaps he it’s Tywin and Joffrey he should hate, not the Queen. “I think I need to have another talk with the Kingslayer,” he says, and bites his bottom lip. His chest feels tight. “And this time, not in the pen where anyone could listen in.”

Clearly worried, Jon says, “Maybe I should be with you.”

“I’ll have Grey Wind with me,” Robb tells him. “I’ll be safe.”

Except that isn’t the sort of safety his brother is referring to. Even so, he doesn’t specify, which Robb appreciates. “I’m leaving Ghost with you in case something goes wrong.”

Since he knows they’ll all be angry with him for the rest of the day if he denies help, he agrees. It’s just easier that way.

 

 

Jaime sits before Robb Stark still bound in irons with two direwolves instead of one at the boy’s side. He looks younger than usual, with tired eyes and reddened hairline near his temple that Jaime recognizes from looking at himself in the mirror after day after day locked inside a room for hours with his father learning how to read.

“Your sister wants a trade organized without the small council’s knowledge,” the boy tells him. “You for Sansa.”

Beyond commenting on not wanting their house joined with the Starks, Cersei largely ignored the girl while Jaime was in King’s Landing. “Are you surprised?” he asks.

Very bluntly, the boy answers, “No.” Then he pauses before adding, “I’m telling you because Alton Lannister will be in your pen until a new one is built for him. As much as you claim your innocence with Bran and Jon Arryn, you’re still not a man I’m going to trust. If you try to escape, or if you try to hurt him, even if Sansa comes back you’re not going to see King’s Landing again. And since the Queen wants you to help find whoever decided the Starks and the Lannisters should fight, seeing you returned isn’t the worst situation I can think of.”

So Cersei knows about the Stark suspicion involving Jon Arryn, too. Sansa’s too young to know about that, which means she only could have heard that from Ned Stark. “I promise you, King in the North,” he says, “no escape attempts from me.”

The darker direwolf growls and Stark scratches behind his ear absentminded-looking as he calls for his brother and friend take Jaime away, back to his pen and yet one step closer to freedom.

 

 

Whether or not she bled, she and Joffrey are not to be married until after the war, something the Queen made clear from the beginning. Right now, Sansa is very, very relieved. “It’s messy,” she says when she takes the seat the Queen offers her. “It’s messy and my back hurts.”

Sighing, Queen Cersei says, “Being a woman is unfortunate at times. Having children is a gift, but bleeding is not. Get used to the pain, little dove, because you’ll feel that every month for years.”

 Oh, gods. Why? Of course, Mother explained it to her, but she neglected to mention  how horrifically unpleasant it is. “Does anything else happen, Your Grace?” she asks, because there’s no one else in King’s Landing she can talk to.After that, Sansa is forced to sit and listen to all the horrible things that can happen to her for sometimes up to a week every month—a pockmarked face, bloated stomach, pain in her hips and back, headaches, vomiting, sometimes fainting if she’s unlucky enough of a woman. Sansa never, _ever_ thought she’d truly admire the Queen despite the moments where she’s genuinely grateful for her, but if she can sit in one of those uncomfortable small council chairs for hours on end and help rule a kingdom while feeling like this or worse…well, that’s something Sansa doesn’t _want_ to imagine. How can birthing a child be worse than potentially fainting once a month? Men bleed on the battlefield and women bleed at home.

Robb, Jon, and Theon might be bleeding right now, too.

Once she’s finished explaining why womanhood is a terrible thing, the Queen says, “I plan to trade you for my brother at a time my own family won’t kill me for it. For your sake, let’s hope your red flower is done blooming when the time comes.”

Can Sansa handle one more week in King’s Landing if it means not having to ride in this state?

Yes, she decides. Yes, she can.

 

 

Hugs are not the sort of the thing Tyrion and Cersei do, but when her little brother outstretches his arms, she accepts his embrace without question.

 

 

When Margaery Tyrell first sees Robb Stark, he’s laughing along with a boy with a head of black curls and another not much older than the two of them. The sunlight is streaming through his hair, turning it the color of copper, and the day is shining so bright and cloudless that even the cold she’s not use to can’t diminish his beauty. As she has brothers, even from a distance she can see the others are hovering like mother hens, and she’s about to marry an attractive man surrounded by people who love him.

Now this was the perfect decision because a man like that can win a war.

The moment the three lay eyes on her party, the laughter stops and they straighten. Lady Catelyn, as the one who knows them, greets them first, before saying, “May I present to you, Lord Loras and Ladies Olenna and Margaery of House Tyrell.”

Margaery slides from her horse and her future husband accepts it with a quick enough kiss to mean he’s observing a courtesy, but is generally embarrassed by the whole situation. He’s just a flustered boy. “Robb Stark of Winterfell, King in the North,” he says, title at the end almost like he forgot it and possibly he did. “On my left is Jon Stark of Winterfell and heir to the Northern Throne, and Theon Greyjoy of the Iron Islands.”

If she remembers correctly from her studies not a month ago, Theon Greyjoy is the Starks’ hostage, but he doesn’t look much like a hostage now, not even in the way Lady Catelyn stands next to him. The only Jon she knows of in Winterfell is a Snow and certainly no heir. Even though they look nothing alike, she realizes this must be the same person and that Robb Stark is not just surrounded by people by love him, but by family.

Well. This is certainly a change from Renly.

Originally she was going to say she fell in love with the idea of him from afar, but she sees from just a few minutes with him that he’s not vain enough for that to work. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Your Grace,” she answers as Jon Stark and Theon Greyjoy strike a conversation with Loras and Lady Catelyn converses with Grandmother.

“As we’re to be married, I think Robb will do, My Lady,” her future husband tells her, and she’s liking him more and more by the minute.

A King this loved could win. Maybe a man like this is even someone she could love, too.

 

 

After a life of attempting not to ruin himself in any way, Robb is clueless about women. Theon tries to give him some advice, but his own advice is stale because he halted all “indecent” behavior Mother and Father didn’t know about the moment they said he was to marry Sansa, and Jon is even worse than Robb is. So when he asks Margaery to dine with him, alone, he hopes it doesn’t sound as though he wishes to have her dress off before the night is through. Even if it’s a very revealing dress and she’s very beautiful and he possibly wouldn’t—

No, now is not the time to think of anything like that.

Just as he sends Olyvar away because Mother said he should use his squire to set up the table instead of trying on his own if he wanted it to look halfway presentable, Margaery calls from outside, “May I come in?”

“Yes,” he says immediately, clenching his hands so his nails dig into his palms and quickly relaxing because he promised Theon he’d stop. When she enters, he says, “You look lovely, La—Margaery.”

The southern air doesn’t bother him, so he hadn’t asked for anything to warm his tent. Apparently it bothers her, though, because she makes no move to remove her cloak. “Thank you, Robb,” she answers, already more used to saying just his name than he is of saying hers. “Though I have to wonder how you can walk around without your furs. Is it always this cold here or is it the winter?”

Next to Dorne, the Reach is the warmest area in Westeros, and Robb hopes her family realizes what they’ve done to her. “Compared to where you are, it always is,” he tells her, as it’s better than lying. “Winterfell is worse—but you will get used to it. Theon did. Oh, please, sit.”

She does, folding her dress underneath her to do so, and he takes his seat on the other side of the table. As he grew up with sisters, it’s not as though girls are some mystery to him; it’s romance he doesn’t understand, forced or otherwise. One thing he does know for certain, though, is that Margaery really is beautiful. “Please, tell me about Winterfell,” she says, which is a good because he doesn’t want to talk about the war. “I want to know about my future home.”

“Will you tell me about High Garden, then?” he asks, and she nods. “All right. Well…”

He spends time describing Winterfell in as much detail as he can recall—the high walls where Bran fell, the godswood where he and his siblings used to play, the castle where they light their own fires, the kitchens he and Sansa stole lemon cakes from, the village, the glass garden. It makes him sad, but it’s the first he’s really spoke of Winterfell in a long time, including all the letters sent to Bran and Rickon when they could manage. When he finishes, she describes High Garden, which sounds beautiful and like something Sansa would love, and before the night is through he finds himself promising to visit once the war is over.

Something about Margaery sets him on edge, but at the same time, she seems kind, and that makes speaking to her easier.

 

 

Arya may be thirteen, but she’s of Winterfell and ice is in her blood; she feels some guilt when she tricks Jaqen H’ghar into killing the whole evening’s watch, but she would kill them all herself if it meant returning home. Now Tywin Lannister is gone, off to fight her brother, and Hot Pie seems unnerved, but Gendry knows the rumors about Robb and doesn’t so much as blink. Because he might be the Young Wolf, but more than that he’s a Stark and she’s a Stark so she can be brave like him.

Him and Jon, if Petyr Baelish was telling the truth. Winterfell is where she lives, but her home is her family, and they’re all marching south. “Where are we going?” Hot Pie asks, and Gendry walks close behind her, his sword drawn.

“To find an army,” she answers. “To Riverrun.”

Gendry looks around nervously. “How do you know they’re at Riverrun?”

“I don’t,” she says, “but that’s the Tully home. If I’m going to find them, that’s how.”

“We just escaped one army, why do you want to find another?” says Hot Pie.

“Because not everyone is Tywin Lannister,” she says, and he stops asking questions.

 

 

Seeing off Joffrey is about the last thing Sansa wants to do and Queen Cersei didn’t seem too please with it either, but they cannot deny the King, so here she is. As Joffrey calls her, she hears Lord Tyrion say under his breath, perhaps to Shae, “I doubt my sister likes this.”

As time goes on, Sansa’s come to realize that the Queen _does_ care in a roundabout sort of way. The same cannot be said for Joffrey. “Your King rides forth to battle,” he says. “You should see him off with a kiss.” He draws his sword. “My new blade. Hearteater, I’ve named it. Kiss it.”

He’s vile, but he’s the King, and she leans down to press her lips to the cool steel. “You’ll kiss it again when I return,” he continues, sheathing it, “and taste my uncle’s blood.”

Being a Stark and a Tully, she was always taught the importance of family. Because she probably knows more about battle than he does (Robb rambled if he didn’t get enough sleep), she asks, “Will you slay him yourself?”

“If Stannis fool enough to come near me.”

“So you’ll be outside the gates fighting in the vanguard?” Though she’s come to like the Queen too, she wouldn’t mind goading Joffrey into running towards his death. Questioning his pride is probably the best way to do it.

Clearly uncomfortable now, he answers, “A King doesn’t discuss battle plans with stupid girls.”

Robb never called her stupid. Neither did Jon or Theon. And it was okay that Arya did because sisters are supposed to fight like that. “I’m sorry, Your Grace, you’re right, I’m stupid,” she says because this is a trick Theon would use on Robb, telling him what he wanted to hear, except it would be to calm him down and get him to realize he was doing something wrong. She never thought she’d want someone dead. “Of course you’ll be with the vanguard. They say my brother Robb always goes where the fighting is thickest and he’s only a pretender.”

“Your brother’s turn will come,” Joffrey tells her. “Then you can lick his blood off Hearteater too.”

Once the war is through, he’ll be back because the worst always survive, but she doesn’t need to worry about him killing Robb. If she fought back and they were alone, he wouldn’t even be able to kill her.

If they get married, she’s smothering him with a pillow on their wedding night, consequences be damned.

 

 

Tommen and Mycella sit off alone, both half asleep already despite the war raging outside because they’re too young to understand, and Cersei’s talking with Sansa about how the girl managed to train a direwolf to eat from her hand when Lancel runs in. “When I told you about Ser Ilyn earlier, I lied,” Cersei tells her once she sends the boy back to the battle field where he belongs. “Do you want to know why he’s really here? He’s here for us.

“Stannis may take the city, he may take the throne, but he will not take us alive. It’s better to be dead than taken by thirty battle crazed men, Sansa.” She pulls a key from her belt she had with her just in case this happened. “The kennel my son locked your wolf into is on the way to your chambers. Unlock her and go there. If you hear someone coming, hide under the bed and don’t make a sound. If King’s Landing should stand, I’ll come to you with someone to bring you to your brother when this is over.”

Sansa accepts the key, stares at it like she can’t believe her eyes. “Thank you, Your Grace,” she says quietly. “I know you don’t believe in the mercy of the gods, but I pray for your safety.”

“Just go, little dove. It’s not every day a bird gets back her wings.”

When Cersei first thought to trade Sansa with Jaime, she should have let the girl go. Now they both might die, her city fall, and her brother by law rule in the name of divine right.

 

 

Ser Clegane is in her room, and he’s offering her a way out.

“Queen Cersei will live,” Sansa says, more confident than she feels. “She’ll get me out once this is over.”

He laughs. “The Queen is not your friend, little bird.”

But Sansa isn’t a bird, she’s a wolf, and the Queen doesn’t say it as an insult. She twists her fingers in Lady’s soft fur, and stays.

 

 

In the confusion after the siege, Cersei hands Sansa over to Tyrion’s friend Bronn, now stripped of his position, and reminds him cheerfully that the girl’s direwolf will tear out his throat if he hurts her. Then she gives Sansa a dagger for protection, the girl hugs her tight without invitation as goodbye, and the three are gone before the sun is up.

Naturally, Father finds out before noon, and calls her away from Tyrion’s bedside. “I thought you were too old to act like some silly little girl,” he says, pacing back and forth with his arms tucked behind his back. “Sansa Stark was our hostage, our only leverage against her brother now that you lost her sister.”

“Robb Stark was already marching towards King’s Landing while we had her,” Cersei says. “What leverage was Sansa when he wasn’t trying to negotiate? At least like this we can have Jaime.”

He stops pacing to look at her. “No one knows what that boy will do, you fool,” he snaps. “He’s unstable. Maybe we will get Jaime back alive and whole, but maybe giving away our leverage means we’re expecting his head. If I hadn’t come, Stannis would have taken King’s landing and this is how you honor that. I thought I raised you better.”

In all her thirty-three years, she’s never openly spoken against her father, but he’s put her brother’s life at too low a priority. “If it weren’t for Tyrion and I, King’s Landing wouldn’t have been standing long enough for you to save it,” she says. “I had the idea to use wildfire, he decided how to use it. Just because you didn’t teach me didn’t mean I wasn’t listening.”

“ _You_ worked with Tyrion? I never thought you’d get along.”

“Well, we do well together. Imagine what we could have done had we Jaime, too.” Then she stands to look him in the eye because she’s thirty-three, Robert is dead, and she’s the most powerful woman in Westeros. “Father, I’m Queen Regent. My word is law, and I’ve already given the order that no one is to go after Sansa. I suggest you don’t try to cross me.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Or what, Cersei? Ilyn Payne will take my head? Joffrey will not allow it and his word supersedes yours.”

“No, Father,” she answers. “I’ll convince _my_ son to make Jaime Hand instead and you’ll have to stand by and watch your children rule Westeros without you.”

Father’s hands tighten into fists and Sansa Stark is safe.

 

 

Thank the gods the Tyrell women aren’t here, is Robb’s first coherent thought, and Jon looks as pale as he feels. Two hundred Northerners dead and every few minutes he hears one of his men cry out because he’s found a father or a brother or a son or a friend.

Suddenly Theon pulls them behind a wall. “This is nothing compared to some of what I saw in the Iron Islands,” he says after reminding Robb to breathe and telling Jon to stop frowning worse than usual. “I thought the war taught you not everyone’s as honorable as you Starks.”

Robb runs his fingers through his hair so they tug on his curls and neither his brother nor his friend protest. “It has taught me,” he says because he’s seen the horrible treatment of Northern prisoners before. “This just—caught me by surprise.”

“How could anyone even want to do this to another person?” Jon says, which is the same thing he’s thinking. “I thought the reason we’re supposed to hate wildings is because they do things like this to each other.”

The world is full of hypocrites. Robb learned that too. But that doesn’t mean he has to like it. All it means is that he can’t hide behind this wall and away from the eyes of his men forever. These are Northerners and because they’re Northerners, he doesn’t care if it delays them the night; he and his living men are burying the dead in as proper fashion they can manage and Harrenhal will never be occupied again.

 

 

“We’re going to Riverrun, then?” Margaery says when the men return from Harrenhal, covered in dirt and dried blood and Loras sees her just long enough to give her a short explanation of what happened. “For how long?”

With a shrug, Robb answers, “I doubt it will be more than a week. I should go to discuss how the battle against Ser Clegane went with my uncle, anyway.”

He’s never been the Riverlands until this war, he told her earlier. Their mother went through it recently to go see their father in King’s Landing before his death and then to stop in the Eyrie, but she didn’t go to Riverrun. Though Margaery cannot understand why Lady Catelyn would want to avoid her childhood home, this is something Robb grew up with and thinks is normal, so she can’t ask. Ruling the North should be easy for him when he’s never really left before. “Have you met him before?” she asks instead.

“Yes, a few times when he came to Winterfell,” he says. “To be perfectly honest, I don’t like him very much. He was never shy about telling my mother how much he disapproved of her treatment of Jon.”

Margaery had heard of bastards being legitimized before, but it never seemed like anything other than a last resort. Neither Robb nor Lady Catelyn treat Jon (he refused to be called a prince the moment anyone tried) as if he were ever a Snow.

That’s when she notices what looks like a bruise near his hairline. “What happened, Robb?” she asks, reaching out to touch it, but he flinches away before her fingers can make contact. “Robb?”

“It’s nothing,” he answers with such a perfectly blank face that it must be a lie and she doesn’t understand why she’s so upset about it. This is a marriage, not a love affair. “Theon’s elbow just collided with my head in Harrenhal. Don’t worry about me, Margaery. It doesn’t hurt.”

The mark is clearly irritated, which means it most likely does hurt, or stings, and she grew up with brothers, so she knows what injuries look like. She also has several girl cousins who visited on occasion and she can recognize the effects of hair pulling. “Of course,” she says because she knows when to pick her battles as well as any man and now isn’t the time. “When do we leave?”

“In the morning. You should have your belongings ready by first light.”

Normally they travel at nightfall and she wonders if it’s for her and her grandmother’s benefit that they aren’t now. “I will,” she promises, and does what feels right as she leans over to kiss him.

Though the kiss is short and Robb is clearly nervous, it’s better than any she ever shared with her late husband. He separates first and starts stuttering for something to say, so she cuts in, “I hope that wasn’t too forward.”

“No,” he says quickly. “No, it was—it was good.”

For a beginner, he wasn’t bad, either, and Margaery thinks that with a little practice, he’ll be very, very good.

 

 

The one thing Arya feels that everyone should know about her is that she’ll defend her family until the very end. “My brother isn’t trying to burn the countryside,” she says now that she’s exposed and she can say what she likes. “He’s trying to save my sister from King’s Landing.”

Unfortunately, none of the Brotherhood seem to take her too seriously. “By burning the countryside,” Thoros of Myr says. “Robb Stark isn’t some soldier, he’s leading a war. Men win wars by killing.”

“Just because he has to kill someone doesn’t mean he’ll like it.”

“Just because he doesn’t like it doesn’t mean it isn’t killing.”

When Gendry puts his hand on her shoulder, she has to stop herself from shoving him away. These men don’t deserve the satisfaction of her frustration. “You don’t know Robb, or Jon, or Theon,” she answers. “You can’t judge someone you’ve never met.”

Several of the men around her laugh, as if somehow she’s less than they are even though she’s Lady (Princess?) Arya of Winterfell, daughter of Lord Eddard Stark and Lady Catelyn, and youngest sister of King Robb. She might not be above them, but she’s certainly not below them, either. “We might be hidden away in the woods like this, but news still reaches us,” the archer tells her. “Your brother agreed to marry the Tyrell girl not a month after her husband’s murder. His attacks come in the night, so most of his battles are more slaughters than fights. If you’re expecting to find a clean war with Robb Stark, you won’t find one; children aren’t meant to be leading armies.”

“Seventeen isn’t a child!” she says because it’s young, but not _that_ young. “And I don’t care how he fights. It’s been nearly two years since I’ve seen my brothers and I want them. If you can’t understand why that’s so important to me, then no wonder you’re so miserable all the time.”

Thoros of Myr stares at her evenly. “Watch what you say, girl,” he answers. “You’re pretty quick to judge yourself.”

She doesn’t care what these men think of her. Riverrun is near and with it her Tully family and somewhere else out here are Robb and Jon. She’s thirteen, and has already spent too many months running.

 

 

After Edmure fails three times, Catelyn nudges Theon because the boat is so far away now that she trusts him to shoot a successful arrow more than anyone else here. He glances at her, so she nods, and he goes forward to take the bow away from her brother.

“He doesn’t have a drop of Tully blood in him,” she hears Edmure mumble as Theon shoots without so much as checking the wind.

As the arrow reaches its mark and the fire lights, Bryden says, “Well, he hit it, and that’s more than I can say for you.”

She should have told Robb, who’s her blood, but Theon is closer and better with the bow. And in the end, through her family’s eyes, her son would be on the same level as Jon if they knew the truth. Beyond the grave you learn it. “Thank you,” she says to Theon after he gives Edmure his bow back. “That was very helpful.”

“I couldn’t let your father go without proper burial, My Lady,” he answers, and she feels too tired to so much as cry.

 

 

When Sansa imagined reuniting with Robb, she never thought they would have an audience of over a hundred men, or Bronn, or the Tyrells, or be at her grandfather’s funeral. And she certainly never imagined that they would cry because surely the heat of the south burned any tears right of her, she imagined, but here she is, and here he is, and they’re both crying unashamedly in front of this crowd of strangers. She’s wrapped up in Robb’s arms—Robb who reached her first—but then Jon comes around from the right and hugs both of them and Theon the same from the left and somehow even Mother squeezes herself in there. Sansa’s in the center, nose pressed into the fur of Robb’s coat, and she doesn’t know whose tears she feels on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Sansa,” her brother says low into her hair. “I’m so, so sorry.”

With them all pushed together like this, it’s hot, but they’re of Winterfell and she already feels herself beginning to freeze again. Winter is coming, Father said, and she welcomes it with open arms and lungs suffocating under the weight of her family’s love.

 

 

Spending time with Robb quickly becomes Margaery’s favorite pastime, though it’s rare to get him alone, especially now that Sansa is back. She likes the girl too, really, but _doesn’t_ like the way she constantly looks as if she’s expecting someone to hit her. In the beginning Margaery was here for political reasons but at some unidentifiable point, she’s grown to truly care about her awkward future husband and his overprotective family.

Maybe one day this will be a weakness, but for now there’s no fault in it.

For the moment Jon and Theon have Sansa’s full attention because the three boys decided teaching her how to physically defend herself would be a good idea and those two immediately began bickering over whether the bow or the sword is better, and Robb isn’t busy, so for at least a bit she gets him to herself. Or as much as she can, but she doesn’t think of Grey Wind as an intrusion. “With your men here, we now outnumber the royal army by enough that we can afford to lose a couple hundred men to something other than battle,” he tells her, because the Starks are surprisingly lax at informing her of their plans as a betrothed. “I’m sending some men back North to finish the harvest before winter comes. There’s no point in winning our war just to return and starve ourselves.”

They’re walking the riverside and no one’s around and she needs this boy to like her, so she slips her hand in hers. Though he tenses almost unnoticeably, he doesn’t comment. Under his eyes are darkened from a lack of sleep and he seems thinner than when they first met. She’s heard rumors he’s unstable, but this is the first she’s seen of it. “People say long summers mean longer winters,” she answers, adjusting her grip further so she can lace their fingers together. “Will we be able to survive in the North?”

“Easier than you down in the south,” he says. “The North has summer snows. We’re used to the cold. Mother and Theon _became_ used to the cold, so I’m sure that means you will too. I hope that means you will, too. It’s not as terrible as outsiders say it is.”

Lady Catelyn is here from the Riverlands though, and Theon from the Iron Islands, where it’s already much colder than High Garden. When Robb wears his furs outside his tent, it seems more for formality than anything else. “It’s good of you to send men North, then,” she says because it’s easiest to agree with him for now, or at least until they’re in Winterfell and he won’t be so preoccupied and can listen to her. “We’ll need reserves to survive the winter. Who will you be sending?”

“The Karstarks. Their land is probably the most fertile in the North. Lord Karstark isn’t particularly happy about letting Jaime Lannister leave, either,” he says, and looks away from her to the river, agitated. “I imagine the other lords won’t be happy with this. Hopefully it won’t take any lost fingers this time to keep them rallied to my side.”

“I beg your pardon?”

With a laugh that sounds half-forced, he explains about his first war council and how his direwolf is about as overprotective as his family and Theon almost pulled his knife. Margaery wonders if he even knows how rare of a person he is to have so many people love him this deeply and decides that he doesn’t, as isolated as he is. Then she wonders _why_ he’s so isolated, but knows it’s not the time to ask.

 

 

Cersei throws herself at Jaime without delay when he finds her in her chambers. “I thought I’d lost you,” she says as he wraps his arms around her and he can feel how fast his heart is beating. “When I traded Sansa for you, Father said Robb Stark is unpredictable. I thought you wouldn’t come back to me alive.”

In comparison Riverlands, King’s Landing is warmer than he remembered, and she’s feels feverish even through their clothes. Father was cold about his return, clearly annoyed about the loss of his Stark hostage, and Tyrion was strangely overjoyed at the sight of him; he has yet to see his children. “Robb Stark hasn’t touched any of the prisoners,” he tells her. “The Northerners didn’t hurt me. I’m here, Cersei. I’m safe.”

In a way, he hates the damn boy for it because no one has the right to be that unfailingly _good_ , but his father taught him well. “No one will separate us again,” she answers, speaking into his shoulder. “Not the Starks, not the Baratheons, not even our family—if we go down, we go down together.”

He may hate the Stark boy, or want to hate him, but he loves her with every inch of his body, inside and out. They collapse together onto the bed, her tucked solidly against him, and he is hers and she is his and the world is straight for the first time in months.

 

 

For the first week, Father surprisingly let Jaime recuperate from his journey and time in captivity. The moment that week is finished, though, he calls the three of them to the small council room without the small council. Despite the lovely morning he had with Shae, the tense atmosphere in the room is enough to make Tyrion’s mood plummet.

Throwing two letters down on the table, Father says, “Daenerys Targaryen bought an entire army of Unsullied to move against us and Robb Stark is to marry Margaery Tyrell. The Tyrells are officially out of our reach. With Stannis still alive, that makes three enemies marching on us and two major threats. We need to eradicate one of them before they can get any closer.”

“Stannis is closest,” Cersei says. “We’ve beaten him before.”

“Stannis isn’t the threat I was talking about,” Father says, taking a seat at the end of the table and Cersei isn’t as much of an idiot as even Tyrion thought she was until recently, so she must have already known that. “He doesn’t have the numbers anymore to be one. But Daenerys Targaryen has dragons and an army and the Tyrells and the Starks together have the numbers to surpass ours. Attacking the Targaryen girl from across the sea is a waste of resources and energy. If we kill the Stark boys while we have the chance, their war effort with disband. Preferably we can kill Sansa and that Greyjoy boy at the same time.”

This is not going to end well. Even if he weren’t clever, Tyrion would be able to see that, because the Starks have this ability to instill steadfast loyalty wherever they go. “Forgive me for interrupting your motivational speech, Father,” he says and at some point the three of them have grown an odd ability to defy him. War does strange things to people, he supposes. “If you intend to defeat them in the field before they reach King’s Landing, I need to remind you that Robb Stark hasn’t lost a battle yet.”

Father ignores him. “Jaime,” he says instead, “what did you learn of any of them in the Stark camp?”

“Not as much you would think,” his brother answers. “The boy is smart, I’ll give him that—the guards near me weren’t terribly important people and they weren’t allowed to drink. I knew when his men declared him King in the North and when Snow became a Stark because they were just so _loud_ , and I knew when we were moving. I spoke to him twice and Lady Catelyn once. She said nothing about him, but from my talks with him, the best I learned is that he doesn’t like being defined by his age. He might not have lost a battle, but he’s still a child. If we don’t defeat him soon, he’s only going to get better.”

Sansa is smart, too, to have survived King’s Landing for as long as she did. Nearly tricking Joffrey into the vanguard proved that. The Lannisters are rich, the Starks manipulative yet noble. “Attacking the city could be the boy’s downfall,” Tyrion says. “I’ve spoken to the whole family at some length now, even the cripple and the ward. They aren’t the sort of people to burn a place to the ground with so many innocent people inside. A siege might kill them.”

As he leans forward to brace his hands on the table, Father says, “I can’t create plans on ‘might’ and ‘could.’ The boy might be soft, but the Tyrells are not. Even he sacrificed two thousand men to capture Jaime. No, with Daenerys Targaryen finally showing signs of being able to cross the Narrow Sea, it’s time we forget about honor. We’re Lannisters, we have a reputation to uphold, and there has to be a family inside the Stark army not as honorable as the rest.”

“Father,” Cersei starts, but he cuts her off with a withering look and continues, “The Starks have ruled the North for generations. As long as they live, they’ll rally the people to their side.”

“Sansa is fourteen! The cripple boy, what, eleven?”

“Yes, Cersei, but that Greyjoy boy she’s to be married to is—” Then Father pauses and Tyrion knows that face. That face is normally a good thing, but what they’re talking about is almost on the same level as what they did the Targaryen family. “She’s not marrying Theon Greyjoy. If anyone’s loyalty can be bought, it’s Walder Frey. Out, all of you.”

Cersei keeps her composure right up until the door to the room shuts from the outside. “I thought I was sending her to safety,” she says, voice low enough that Father won’t here. “I sent Sansa to a slaughter.”

Though Tyrion thinks it, he doesn’t say that she couldn’t have know. Instead he puts his hand on his arm and Jaime slips his around her shoulders and by the gods, they’re the Lannister siblings worried about a Stark. How could anyone ever say life isn’t one big joke?

 

 

On the same day Robb receives a raven from Walder Frey demanding his son and Sansa be married at once with the promise she can stay with them until the end of the war or he’ll recall his men, Lady Olenna invites Catelyn for lunch. Somewhere else in the camp Sansa is telling a very angry and very stressed brother that she doesn’t mind as she won’t have to return until this over, and Catelyn is profoundly grateful he has no reason to scrub anything off his body that will require throwing someone out of the room for the time being. Nothing Robb has done in recent memory has scared her more than entering his tent and finding his arm bleeding.

At noon, she joins Lady Olenna at the Riverside not far from where her son and Lady Margaery have taken to having daily midday walks. “This seems suspicious,” the older woman says once Catelyn is seated, and sips her tea, “though I’m sure you’ve thought that already.”

“I have,” she answers, and Lady Margaery is skipping stones alone, waiting for Robb. “Winter is coming, though; as jealous as the other lords are, even they agree this is necessary.”

Putting down her tea cup, Lady Olenna says, “My grandchildren would be coming with you and I want them safe. I also want our agreement to stay sound for the sake of _your_ family’s safety, Lady Catelyn. I’m old enough to know Walder Frey despite our distance and precautions need to be made before we reach the Twins.”

For a moment, Catelyn is very quiet. Walder Frey has never been friend and now demands her daughter’s hand when they’ve only been reunited for a fortnight. Despite the promise that they can stay together, it leaves a bad feeling in her stomach. “He might think of a reason for another bargain if we go,” she says, even though it’s when instead of if. “Originally he didn’t ask for Robb, but I think now he might—what better honor for his child than Queen in the North? No, something needs to be done about it.”

“They should be married beforehand,” Lady Olenna says. “It won’t be anything extravagant. Margaery may have a flare for the dramatic, but your son doesn’t seem the sort of young man to mind.”

No, Robb wouldn’t. He’s obviously falling in love with the girl already, something Catelyn didn’t expect to happen, and until now he’s rarely been the center of attention despite his position in the household. His name day was always hard for her and Ned, so they grew unfortunately distant to him during that time of year. “Sansa wishes to get it done with as soon as possible,” Catelyn answers. “They should marry tonight.”

 

 

They marry that night. Sansa cries because she returned to a war and she’s already experiencing something beautiful. There’s no bedding, which Robb’s relieved for, and his family hugs both of them.

“May I accompany you to our chamber, my husband?” she says, which is good because Robb was having difficulty getting the words out.

With a nervous smile, he answers, “Of course, _Queen_ Margaery,” and she laughs.

 

 

Before Lord Baelish can leave to marry Lysa Arryn, Cersei calls upon Ros, his whore-turned-confidant at a time she knows his spies aren’t present. In exchange for Jaime, she promised to find out who plotted to have the Lannisters and Starks fight even before the war started and as Littlefinger had Ned Stark executed for “treason,” she has her suspicions. “I don’t know why Baelish is bringing you to the Vale with him and I don’t care,” she says once the young woman is seated. “But I know how he is and I know you can’t possibly like him, so you’re working for me now. While in the Eyrie, you’re to be my ears.”

One of the wonderful things about being Queen is that most people know better than to argue. Instead Ros sits silent, await directions. “You’re a Northern girl, aren’t you?” Cersei asks.

“Yes, Your Grace. From Winterfell.”

“Good.” Winterfell is actually better than expected. “When you hear about the Starks, then, I’m sure you’ll know what sounds more…unusual than normal. Just like as his confidant I’m sure you know he’s still in love with Lady Catelyn. But more than that, I need you to listen for the name Jon Arryn and not in the context of his status as the late Lysa Arryn’s husband. Do you know who else he was?”

“The Hand of the King before Lord Stark, Your Grace,” Ros answers. “He died around the time of Lord Robb’s sixteenth name day.”

A well connected whore, then. If they had more time, Cersei would ask who in the castle she was fucking. From what Sansa said, name days were never treated as big events in Winterfell, which might have something to do with Robb being a bastard. “He was murdered,” she says bluntly. “I need to know if Lord Baelish knows why or how—though with complete discretion, of course. Because if he discovers our little secret, he will kill you. And if you tell him, I’ll make sure you’re tortured slowly and painfully before Ser Ilyn takes your heard. Do you understand?”

Again, Ros says, “Yes, Your Grace.”

Cersei smiles. “So we have an agreement, then,” she says. “If you find out who killed Jon Arryn, come back to King’s Landing—it will be dangerous, of course, but it’s a harder road from Winterfell than it is from the Eyrie. Then you can run back along to the North if you’d like, free from Lord Baelish at last.”

For one last time, the woman agrees, and Cersei lets her go.

 

 

Ser Barristan, Daenerys quickly finds out, is useful in more ways than just stopping an assassination attempt. He knows of the recent comings and goings better than Ser Jorah, or anyone else she’s so far encountered.

“Ned Stark was executed before King Joffrey dismissed me, for denying his right to the Iron Throne,” he tells her and Ser Jorah after she has the Unsullied as her army. “From the moment he was imprisoned, though, Robb Stark took up arms against the Lannisters and the Baratheons. He even captured Jaime Lannister. If you’re looking for an ally in Westeros, Princess, he’s the one you want.”

Before she can answer, Ser Jorah says, “How do we know he’s still alive?”

Though they only discussed it once, she does remember that the Starks were the family that wanted him executed; she can understand his reluctance. According to both him and her brother, the Starks were also one of the families that rebelled against her father. “I know the rumors,” Ser Barristan answers. “Everyone does. But the last news I heard before boarding the boat that brought me here is that his men declared him King in the North. A boy like that—his people won’t simply let him die in battle. And I don’t know if he’s the one who made the strategies or the lords he has with him, but they were more than effective.”

Boy. He said—“What rumors?” she asks, because Ser Jorah doesn’t talk about the Starks the way he will the other Houses of Westeros.

The two men glance at each other before Ser Jorah answers, “I’m of the North,  I know them better. Lord Robb is…complicated. The two of you are about the same age, Khaleesi, and rumors say he’s been touched in the head since he was a child. There were questions about why Ned Stark didn’t just legitimize his bastard, who’s older him.”

“And he’s my best choice as an ally?” People say her father was mad and that’s why he was killed; touched doesn’t have the same connotation, but she never wants to be around someone like her brother again.

“He don’t want the Iron Throne, Princess,” Ser Barristan says, almost gently, “and I don’t know what affliction the boy has, but everyone says he takes after his father. Ned Stark was an honorable man who didn’t enjoy cruelty. And he must be doing something right for his men to declare him a king.”

She needs allies in Westeros. This is a fact, even if it’s one she doesn’t like, and people aren’t there sewing banners and singing prayers for her return. If Robb Stark’s people declared him King but he doesn’t want the Iron Throne, then he’ll want his own land. It’s the North, not cutting through the middle of the country, he can have it if that’s what it takes. “You know more about him than I do,” she says after a moment. “How will I convince him to side with me from across the Narrow Sea?”

By nightfall, she’s writing a letting for a raven to bring to Robb Stark, which is the Westeros form of communicating. She says she’ll give him the North if he helps win her the Iron Throne and to send her a meeting place in Westeros because by the time he replies, she’ll already be at sea.

 

 

“Pretend to be ill for the party and ceremony,” Robb says quite suddenly during the ride to the Twins where Margaery stays next to him. “I want you to keep the wolves with you.”

No one in his family or hers trusts Walder Frey’s intentions for this wedding, she knows, and neither does she; it’s impeding a war effort he supposedly supports to halt it for this. All his men, even Loras, who’s grown fond of them, are worried about this means. “It will look strange for the Queen not to be present for the Princess’ wedding,” she says because they haven’t been married long, but if this is a trap she doesn’t want to leave her husband’s side.

“Not if you can play it well enough,” he answers. “Margaery, I’m going to worried about Sansa. I gave my men the order not to drink that night because we leave the next morning—no argument, it’s expected. Lord Umber’s son will make sure it. Maybe Lord Frey will assume you’re pregnant and we’re too young to realize.”

Realistically, eighteen and nineteen are not too young, but to someone as old as Lord Frey, they’re still young enough to be stupid. She’s never met the man, never even heard much talk about him until recently, but Grandmother and Catelyn spoke of him to her because apparently she should expect some form of vulgar behavior. Handling it is something she can do, but she doesn’t know if the same can be said about her husband. Since they first met, she’s noticed he’s a very anxious person to the point of being problematic, and the closer they get to the Twins, the worse he seems to get. No, she really doesn’t want to leave him alone at his younger sister’s wedding to the son of a man he didn’t particularly like.

Even so, she’d arguably be keeping the direwolves safe and the Starks are very attached to their pets. On the chance she hears a commotion indicating a trap, she could always leave the room and let the wolves do the rest. Surprise attacks are Robb’s specialty. “If this gets you killed, I’ll never forgive you,” she tells him.

He just smiles. “You don’t need to worry about that,” he says. “I already promised Jon and Theon I wouldn’t.”

His brother and friend are both somewhere behind them, Jon with Catelyn and Theon with Sansa. When they have children themselves, Margaery hopes they’ll be as close as the Stark siblings are. She and her brothers always got along well enough, but they were never friends as well as family. “I’m trusting you, Robb,” she says. “Don’t make me regret it.”

“I promise you, Margaery, I’ll be all right.”

From some reason, she can’t find it in herself to believe him.

 

 

The Hound. She’s stuck with _The Hound._

“Truth is, you’re lucky,” he’s saying as they trot off to King’s Landing, back towards the Queen and Joffrey and further away from home. “You don’t want to be out here by yourself, girl. Someone worse than me will find you.”

Anger runs through her, burns white-hot. “There’s no one worse than you.”

With a humorless laugh, he says, “You never knew my brother. He killed a man for snoring. There’s plenty worse than me. There’re men who like to beat little girls, like to rape them. Saved your sister from some of them.”

This gives her a pause. “You’re lying,” she says because she doesn’t want to think good of him.

“Ask her,” he tells her. “Ask her when you see her again. Ask her who came back for her when the mob had her on the back. I was the only one the Queen trusted enough not to hurt her when I found her.”

No, he’s lying. He has to be lying. The Queen wouldn’t care if someone hurt her sister and anyway, who would ever _want_ to hurt Sansa? Is it because she’s pretty?

Suddenly they’re at a large expense of water and Arya realizes it won’t be long until she can learn what’s true and what isn’t for herself. “Is that the Blackwater?”

“The Blackwater?” he repeats. “Where do you think I’m taking you?”

She twists to look at him. “Back to King’s Landing,” she answers. “Back to Joffrey and the Queen.”

His lips tug downward into a frown. “Fuck Joffrey, fuck the Queen,” he says. “That’s the Red Fork. I’m taking you to the Twins.”

“But why?” she asks, genuinely confused.

“Because your family will be there,” he says, which only surprises her more. “And they’ll pay me for you.”

There’s a fleeting feeling of hope, but she squashes this down because no, he killed her friend, he’s _lying._ “Why would they be at the Twins?”

The horse neighs and he says, “Those outlaws you love so much never told you. The whole countryside’s yapping about it. Queen Cersei traded off your sister for her brother. The little bird’s off to marry one of the Frey boys. So quit trying to bash my skull in and we might just make it there in time for the wedding.”

Even _Sansa_ is there? Of course, she’s marrying a Frey and not Theon, so that’s all backwards and wrong, but maybe, just maybe, the Hound is telling the truth.

Maybe Arya can finally go home.

 

 

Already Sansa doesn’t like this place and though she said she would do this for the sake of winning this war, she’s relieved that Lord Frey granted her permission to stay with her family until it’s over. Though she’s the one who’s to be married into his House, it’s Margaery Lord Frey calls forward, and Sansa feels the back of Theon’s hand bump against her own. She stopped caring about romance and lady loves and songs at her Father’s execution, but part of her still hoped that as marriage for her was inevitable, it would be with him. Instead she’s here about to be used as a bargaining piece in the middle of war.

When Lord Frey says, “Still can’t see you. Old eyes,” Margaery takes another few deliberate steps forward. She’s as beautiful as she always is, wrapped up in a dress of blue and silver with a silver cloak Mother lent her because she wasn’t used to the cold. She’s the type of sister Sansa always wanted. “Hmm, very pretty. Prettier than this lot anyway. Very shapely as well.” Robb’s tense, though he’s better than he used to be at hiding it. “Oh, you tried to hide her under all those furs. If you wanted to hide her, you shouldn’t have brought her here in the first place. I can always seen what’s going on under a dress. Been at this a long time. I bet when you take that dress off it, everything stays in place. Doesn’t drop an inch. Where is Princess Sansa?”

Mother nods her head slightly to move forward and Sansa and Margaery switch places. None of the boys are happy, something she knows without looking. “Yes, you’re very pretty too,” he says, squinting at her. “You’ll make all my daughters jealous, I’m afraid. Maybe even my sons.” He looks away from here, back to the group as a whole, and she steps back to her family. “Well, I have enough in the hall for you lot. We’ll set up tents outside with food and ale for the rest of your men.”

Voice tight, Robb answers, “Thank you, My Lord.”

Lord Frey stands and claps his hands once. “Well, let’s get ready,” he says. “The wine will flow red and the music will play loud and you get back to killing people in the name of honor.”

From this whole display alone, it’s obvious that he thinks he’s somehow intimidating, but he doesn’t know what the word even means. If she’s to be married into this House, then she’s not settling for the position of idle wife. No, not in a place as dreary and stale and filled with shadows as this.

She’s the Princess in the North, she’s the wolf who survived over a year in the heated den of lions, and if she’s to be stuck here instead of Winterfell, then by the gods, she is not resting until they realize she’s not someone to be called upon and put on display.

 

 

As Sansa has no father now and Jon is legitimized, he’s the one to walk her down the aisle. They look eye to eye and she’s fourteen, so she no longer has the body of a little girl. The dress she has is one from King’s Landing that the Queen gave her for the journey and though it’s probably considered everyday wear for a Lannister, it works well enough for a Stark wedding. “We can stop the bedding,” he tells her quietly as she smoothes down the purple fabric of her skirt. “Frey might be host, but we’re still the royal family…I suppose.”

Being part of a “royal family” is something they’re all getting used to. If someone calls out Princess, there will be a moment where Sansa doesn’t reply; he refuses to let anyone call him Prince Jon. It’s been over a year and Robb still gets flustered at Your Grace. “I want that,” she says. “When do we leave?”

“In the morning,” he answers, and squeezes her hand because this is his little sister about to married, even if it is to the wrong person. “Are you ready, Sansa?”

She straights her back to perfect posture and holds herself tall. “Robb needed this bridge to get to me and here I am. I’m ready, Jon.”

Even though he doesn’t think she is, he doesn’t argue, and leads her down the aisle. After this is over, Jon is making sure that the Frey boy knows that House loyalty won’t be enough to save him if he hurts her.

 

 

The failed massacre starts like this: Sansa’s husband accidently takes a crossbow bolt for Robb and the Freys didn’t expect most of his men to be carrying hidden weapons. If the Boltons weren’t involved, it would have failed before it started.

Instead it doesn’t, and Robb gets grazed by an arrow in the side and Mother has her throat slit by Roose Bolton with last message before Sansa stabs him in the back with a dinner knife— _The Lannisters send their regards._

Robb loses track after that, and somehow he’s outside with Sansa clinging to him and Jon with his arms wrapped solidly around both of them and he can’t seem to get air into his lungs. It takes him a moment to realize his brother is crying and his sister is telling him to breathe and even longer that Margaery is running towards them, wolves at her side. She tries asking what happened, pressing her hand to the wound on his side, and the direwolves prowl in a protective circle around them.

Mother is dead.

Mother is—

_Mother is dead._

Then his men are running out of the woods, beating back Frey men, and Margaery is screaming, “Your royal family is hurt, someone get them—”

“Margaery, this is Robb’s blood, not ours,” Sansa says.

“Get your King help!”

Someone does get his hands on him, but before Robb can see who it is, either the blood loss or his inability to breathe takes hold and unconsciousness takes over. The last thing he hears is Jon shout “ _Arya?_ ” disbelievingly, and everything goes black.

 

 

When Robb wakes up, almost no time at all has passed. Margaery, as his Queen, handled the situation with Ser Clegane and Arya, but instead of trying to ransom the youngest Stark girl like she thought he would, he simply handed her over and offered his services, which she declined. Now her husband’s eyes are finally open, and both his sisters holding one of his hands with Jon by his head, leaning over with his hands clasped in front of him like he thinks his brother is about to disappear. Theon seats guard near his knees and has a look on his face that could scare away a lion while Loras stands watch outside.

And Robb must not have been awake long because he’s only just asking, “What’s happened?” as she enters. He sits up without so much as a wince, which means Sansa and Arya are holding his hands so he doesn’t hurt himself. “What happened after I—is Mother really—is Frey—”

“If you’re looking to execute him, you can’t,” Theon interrupts, tone blunt. “I know that’s what he deserved, but he was going on about her deserving it for raising it for a bastard king and I’d gotten my hand on a bow and—well, I might not be good with a sword, but my arrow never misses its mark.”

“So Mother’s really—”

Jon’s got his hand in his little brother’s hair, like a parent to a child. “There was nothing we could do about it.”

“But we’re going to give her a Tully funeral, since we can’t bring her remains to Winterfell,” Sansa says. “A proper one. We were waiting for you to wake up.”

Despite the news she has, Margaery stands quiet in the corner of the tent, leaving the Starks and Theon to piece this together on their own. They know she’s here if they need her. “The men are ready to go when you are,” Jon tells him. “The Lannisters know where we are. It isn’t safe.”

Robb says, “Put Uncle Edmure in charge of the Twins for now. He’s useless in battle,” before looking to Arya. “You’re—really back.”

With a nod and a few tears slipping down her face, she answers, “Along with terrible timing, but yes, I’m here. I reached here just as you—Ser Clegane brought me. I’m not hurt, so we’ll talk about it when—Robb, I thought you were _dead._ ”

Suddenly her hand is out of his, her arms around his neck, and he hugs her back with his free one instead of letting go of Sansa. “I thought you were too,” he says, pressing a kiss to the side of her head and Margaery doesn’t think her siblings have ever shown this much affection to her in her entire life. “I missed you, Arya.”

“I kept trying to find you. I kept trying.”

Unsurprisingly, it’s Theon who spies the paper in Margaery’s hands, as he’s the only one paying attention to anything outside of the four of them. “What’s that?” he asks, dropping any formality like he does with the Stark siblings, who now all turn to look at her.

For the first time in a long while, she feels uncomfortable as the center of attention. “A raven arrived not a half hour ago,” she answers as gently as she can because this won’t be easy information. “I read it to see if it was important. I don’t recognize the handwriting.”

Sansa is the one who takes it from her outstretched hand. “It’s the Queen’s,” she says. “Cersei Baratheon. It—No. _No._ This isn’t _fair._ ”

Before she can crush it, Robb removes it from her and after a moment of staring, reads aloud, “‘Don’t trust the Boltons. Keep Sansa out of the Twins.’”

“The Queen of Westeros writes us a letter of warning and we don’t receive it until it’s too late,” Jon says, taking the note for himself. “Help from the daughter of the men who bought them out and it did _nothing._ ”

The Starks worship the old gods and she can practically hear the thought circulating their heads about which one they managed to anger. Margaery can’t see how her new family could anger anyone and yet they seem to have enemies at every turn. Catelyn was right, but she sees fewer friends. “We played the game of Tywin Lannister’s patience for too long,” Robb says as Arya finally pulls away from him. “This is enough. He won’t come to us himself and he’d expect an attack on King’s Landing after this. No, we’re going after Casterly Rock instead. The Queen may be helping us, but a city can’t go anywhere.”

Margaery joins the rest of them, taking a seat next to Theon, and no one argues. “The Tyrells are with you,” she says, separating herself from them because she’s a Stark now. “More than ever. Your mother was very loved by all.”

Of course Catelyn was loved, but more than that her children are because though it takes away alone time she has with her husband, even she enjoys watching them together. And her father’s men (for they’re no longer hers, too) love Robb as King in a way they never did Renly because she, as Queen, loves him and wears it like a badge of honor. But Loras is right outside, possibly able to hear everything, so for now she keeps this to herself. People love her brother and people loved Renly, but not like this.

Not enough to call for revenge as loud as the Northern men themselves.

“Give me a few days after the funeral,” her husband says, mouth set in a line of determination. “I’ll have a plan within the week.”

He states it as a fact, and Margaery believes it with the complete faith of someone in love.

 

 

For the first time since she was ten, Cersei actually says the words “I _told_ you” to someone other than Jaime or Tyrion. Her father slaps for it and this is the secret: getting hit never actually stops hurting, and all that happens is you get used to it.

Eyes boring into hers with clear distaste that’s becoming more common as of late, Father says, “You’ve grown to care for the girl, you fool. Your opinions are bias.”

She’s a mother, she understands children in a way he never will, and she promised Ned Stark she’d look after her. She wasn’t sending her back to her brother just to die there. “You still got their mother killed,” Joffrey says, so excited by it she’s afraid to look at him. “The Starks are so attached to each other that must have destroyed them.”

“Clearly you never paid attention to any of the Stark siblings you spoke to, nephew,” Tyrion says, condescending and Cersei is so tired she doesn’t have it in her to care. “Killing Catelyn has made them angry. Not to mention they have their sister back. Sansa’s husband is dead and her arrangement with you broken, freeing her to marry Theon Greyjoy. No, their spirits are far from broken. Isn’t that right, dear brother?”

Before Jaime can answer, Father says, “The remaining Frey who managed to contact us said Theon Greyjoy shot their Father with an arrow, Sansa Stark killed Roose Bolton with a knife meant to cut meat, and the rest of the Boltons there are dead. They were suspicious.”

“Demanding a wedding in the middle of a war will do that to a boy like Robb,” Jaime says with that strange air of familiarity. “Walder Frey wasn’t subtle enough.”

Though Ned Stark didn’t know how the game of thrones was played, his children certainly learned quickly enough. Whatever instability Robb has evidently isn’t much of a problem. “Sansa is also heir to the Twins, since her husband is dead,” Cersei says because she doubts her brother will give it back to the remaining Freys, or if the remaining Freys are old enough. “If she marries Theon Greyjoy as she was supposed to, then a Greyjoy has control of a water passage. The Starks already have control of the Trident. The Forks lead right into the bay at Dragonstone—”

“Where the Tyrells have the numbers to crush Stannis’ depleted ones if need be to get to us,” Tyrion finishes. “In exchange for his mother’s life, we effectively gave him the Riverlands.”

“Catelyn Stark is still dead,” Joffrey insists and while yes, that will hurt them, it’s of minor importance right now. “We have them surrounded by the Vale and Westerlands and if Stannis couldn’t win King’s Landing, then—”

“This isn’t Stannis,” Father cuts in. “Robb Stark doesn’t rely on some fool’s religion to guide him. He’ll attack King’s Landing with his wife’s navy sooner rather than later. City Watch will increase its patrol on the walls and Lord Varys will extend his spies outside the gates. The Freys and Boltons may have ruined our plans to give Sansa a red wedding, but we can still kill that family before they reach city.”

If Robb is anything like his sister, he won’t go straight for King’s Landing. Cersei doesn’t know what he’ll do, but it isn’t that. But if she says anything, Father won’t listen, so she plays the part of a good daughter again and keeps her mouth shut.

 

 

Robb may not be as good with a bow as Theon, but he’s nothing to frown at either, and he does the honors at Mother’s funeral himself. The boat lights with his first arrow.

Later, in their tent, Margaery holds him when he cries and reminds him to breathe.

 

 

“I don’t want to risk the walls at our front and an army at our back,” Robb says two days later, at camp far away from the Twins on the way to the Westerlands. He’s got dark marks under his eyes from sleepless nights, bitten nails, and a split lip. Every older brother instinct Jon has makes him want to bundle him up and hide him away from the world. “We need to take Casterly Rock quickly before the Lannisters can send more men. So we’re going to draw them out of their walls and into the forest with a smaller party where we can surround them when they pursue our ‘retreat.’ Their lead strategist there right now is the Mountain because of my uncle’s blunder; if the men don’t come back, he’ll just send more.”

Having the Mountain as their opposition was something Jon never thought he’d be thankful for but he is now, even if it is only in a dull sort of way. Ever since Mother died, everything feels muted. “Is this another night attack, Your Grace?” Lord Umber asks, bracing his hands against the table. Unlike them, he’s been to Casterly Rock along with Lords Reed and Manderly. They and some of the Reach’s lords provided knowledge of inside and outside the city walls.

With a slight nod, Robb answers, “A surprise attack is our best chance. We aren’t going to attack through the King’s Road, either. The woods will be easier to draw them into. If Theon’s archers can take out the men on the walls, we can scale them and attack from the inside as well, get one of our men to hold open the gate. Theon, do you think—”

“I can do it.” Over the past few days, they’ve lost some of their pretense of formality. All the Northern lords knew it was a lie anyway. “If the gates are even partially wooden, we can light fire to them, separate the two troops. Since the walls are stone it won’t spread.”

“It’s something to consider, but not to take as our first option,” Robb says. “The Lannisters have large numbers, but there will be less at Casterly Rock than any we fought in the open field. We need the Mountain dead, but not every man—we can throw them in their own cells. The same goes for the Lannister family taking charge there. Spread this to the men: no one innocent is to be touched, no house to be torched, and no bodies mutilated for the sake of embarrassment. I might not want the Iron Throne, but I want to show the people of Westeros that I’m not Joffrey or Tywin, either.”

According to Sansa, Joffrey’s men in King’s Landing have been calling his victories _vile_ sorcery, which Jon doesn’t like. “What if we can’t draw them out?” he asks.

“Then we have to rely on archers and scaling the wall to get inside,” Robb answers. “It will be more difficult, but the quicker the better. Our past few battles we’ve finished in the course of a night, a night and half a day at most. Be extremely watchful of scouts, even more so than usual. If we can manage it, I want to take Casterly Rock the way we captured Jaime Lannister and have the battle begun before they know what’s happening. Is something wrong, Ser Loras?”

Ser Loras, Jon realizes, is looking very uncomfortable at the corner of the other end of the table. So do several of the other, younger sworn Tyrell lords. “Directing all the men not to hurt the innocent people in the city is very noble, Your Grace,” he says, “but isn’t a night attack in the forest…lacking honor?”

Robb stares at him blankly. So does Jon, and the other North lords, and when Theon snickers, Jon steps down hard on his foot so he makes it out to be a cough instead. After a moment, his brother says, “Every man leading an army has his style. This is mine. I don’t care about the songs or the glory that bards will sing when this war is finished. When it comes between honor and the life of my men, I’d chose the life of my men any day. This is war, Ser Loras. Battles aren’t always fair.”

Several of the North lords are beaming in pride the way a father will do to his son and though Jon knew Robb always thought this way, his brother had never actually voiced it before. It’s different hearing him say it out loud, or at least more than claiming he wants to go home. “Yes, Your Grace,” Ser Loras answers. “I hope you still allow me to ride at your side.”

“Of course. I hope you see well at night.”

Later, Robb will surely worry that he said the wrong thing and the Tyrells will no longer be behind him, but for now he at least appears confident, which comes as a relief. Maybe, after eight years, he’s finally starting to improve.

Somehow, Jon still doubts it.

 

 

They take Casterly Rock without a problem because the Mountain is about as smart as Robb as expected and the only thing he regrets is that they do, in the end, have to light the gate on fire. Once it’s done, they lock up the prisoners and the Lannister family in their own dungeon, and hide the ring of keys that leads to the cells with written, confusing directions for were to find them left to the Maester (it was Arya’s idea, based on a game they played as children). Then they leave without putting a Northern or Reach lord in a place of power there, and a week later receive another raven from a place very far from home.

“We have another ally, it seems,” Robb tells his men after gathering the lords inside as well as his sisters and his wife because it’s news he would tell them anyway. “Daenerys Targaryen is crossing the Narrow Sea with an army of free Unsullied and dragons and means to take King’s Landing. The letter says if we ally with her, we can have the North as a free and independent country.”

Siding with a Targaryen is an uncomfortable concept for him, as he’s heard the story of what this woman’s father did to his family, but he’s not fighting against dragons if he doesn’t have to. Evidently everyone else agrees that dragons make better friends than enemies too, because he gets several nods of agreement before Lord Glover says, “Does it give us a date of meeting or are we supposed to guess?”

He looks back down at the letter, though he’s read it so many times he has it memorized. “It says six months, but it’s dated for two months ago, so I suppose four months now,” he answers. “She wants to meet in Storm’s End, but that’s Stannis’ territory now. She shouldn’t be so far along that she can’t change course now. Lady Brienne is still here. If she can grant us passage into her father’s lands, it will be safer to meet Queen Daenerys in Tarth.”

“And if Stannis finds out and attacks, he’ll receive a repeat of Lord Tyrion and Queen’s Cersei’s trick with the wildfire,” says Sansa from off to the side. She told them about the battle at the Blackwater at some length. “Only this time with dragons.”

They’re about to side with Daenerys Targaryen and he’s receiving no argument for it. Arya even looks excited at the prospect of dragons, which is the happiest she’s looked since they won Casterly Rock. “So it’s settled, then,” he says. “Someone find Lady Brienne. A couple of ravens need delivering by the end of the day.”

Lord Grimm, of House Tyrell, offers, and Robb dismisses the council shortly after. Arya begins talking excitedly about dragons the moment everyone is gone, looking more like her old self than she has since she returned, and Margaery laces their hands fingers together under the table. When he looks to her, she smiles, and for the first time since Mother died, he feels like he can breathe.

 

 

They take Lannisport because they can and they have the time. The city never received the raven about the attack on Casterly Rock because a Tyrell archer shot it down (Theon shot down the one for King’s Landing, so they attached it to a different raven and sent that instead). As they received no warning, they’re less important to the Lannisters than Casterly Rock and no scout made it past Northern lines, the soldiers and guards are woefully unprepared.

The North has twenty casualties and thirty-two injured. Lannisport was guarded by two thousand men and most end up dead, but the innocent residents aren’t harmed.

As they leave the city, their men are shouting “The King in the North!” and Theon rides next to his friend, Grey Wind between them and blood still rushing between his ears.

 

 

The ravens delivering news of the Stark victories arrive within a week of each other.

“Casterly Rock and Lannisport have fallen,” Father says, angrier than Tyrion has seen him in a long time. “One Clegane brother is missing and the other dead. Even if they have no one stationed there, we still lost our western advantage.”

In a way, they don’t have the eastern advantage, either. Though Petyr Baelish is now Lord of the Eyrie by marriage, Lysa Arryn is still Robb Stark’s aunt and many of the Vale’s bannermen must have known Lady Catelyn. “Where are they going?” Tyrion says. “These aren’t aimless movements. They don’t _do_ aimless movements.”

Pressing down on the map of Westeros, Jaime says, “Both Casterly Rock and Lannisport are on the coast. To attack both they must be planning to move down it and meet with the Tyrell’s fleets. To get to King’s Landing, they need to get past Dorne.”

“They may have taken the Westerlands, but Dorne is still ours,” Father says, which Tyrion supposes is true even though the majority of Dorne hates them. The Westerlands are the one area of Westeros were they’re actually liked. “Send a raven, tell them to be on guard around the coast. If they make it past Dorne, then they need to pass the Stormlands, which is now Stannis’ territory. Either they’ll destroy each other, or the Robb Stark will destroy Stannis. Either way, that’s one enemy defeated. I’ll send another round of banners to intercept them on land. Their path isn’t hard to predict if they’re moving down the coast.”

“They may stop in High Garden,” Cersei says. “After the wedding, the boy might not want to bring his sisters and wife with him.”

“If he does that, then our army will lay siege to the city,” Father says. “For now we’re keeping as many here as we can and doubling the night patrol.”

With Sansa there now, they can’t repeat their move with the wildfire. They’ll expect an attack from the back, too. Though Stannis is smart with his tactics, and his new religion is certainly giving him an extra boost of unpredictability, his way of war is still largely traditional. Robb fights like a child—all over the place. “I don’t believe they’ll be making that stop,” Tyrion says, running his finger along the edge of his goblet. “It leaves them too open for siege and they were recently locked into a room for slaughter. I can’t imagine they’d take kindly to getting trapped behind high walls, even for his Queen and sisters.”

Something feels wrong here. The Starks’ movements aren’t aimless, and they’re certainly costal, but the boy has a habit of doing the absolute opposite of what they think he will. In all the wars he’s seen Father fight in, Tyrion has never seen him become this tangled with someone else’s plans.

If Ned Stark were still alive, he thinks, then Robb Stark would have done what Tyrion never could and made his father proud.  

 

 

A scout stumbles across the Lannister host quite suddenly just north of Bitterbridge, and they’re even more surprised by the sudden battle they’re greeted with at midnight than the host in Lannisport. “Half of them were drunk,” Robb tells Margaery once he’s back and she’s help him remove his armor. “The Lord Commander we captured was so confused to see us he admitted he thought we were heading to the coast.”

Despite having only just returned from battle, Robb looks the best he has since Walder Frey sent the letter about his sister’s marriage, which Margaery thinks of as a relief. She doesn’t understand why her husband gets like this and frankly, she doesn’t know how to ask. “Will news reach King’s Landing of our real course?” she says instead.

“We killed all the ravens they had,” he answers, “and not many men are alive, but those that are have been made prisoner. News might reach Tywin Lannister, but we’ll be in Tarth by then, hopefully with Daenerys Targaryen.”

War isn’t simple arithmetic, but with his men and her men and Daenerys’, their numbers will easily overwhelm the Lannisters. “Does this mean I’ll be able to see Winterfell soon?”

Robb turns and kisses her cheek.

“That’s exactly what it means, Margaery.”

“I’m pleased.”

 

 

At Sansa’s request, she and Theon finally get married. After Joffrey and Robert, she’s not taking any more risks.

And if anything else, at least it means her surname will no longer be Frey.

 

 

Changing course for Tarth delayed them for three days, but Daenerys arrives to chilly, but sunny weather, and a group of tired men and women around her age. She knows Robb only from description, the boy with auburn curls and light blue eyes, because he wears no crown and none of the group is sitting when she enters the tent. Normally she makes those she plans to negotiate with come to her, but this is different than her other occasions, as she has no plans to conquer them.

Missandei introduces her with, “Your Grace, you are in the presence of Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, Queen of the Andals—” She requested her friend removed the title of Queen of the First Men once she realized their roots were strongest in the North. “—Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains, and Mother of Dragons.”

There’s a moment where none of those in the tent with her move. Then her new ally says, “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Queen Daenerys. I am Robb Stark, King in the North. This is Margaery, formally of House Tyrell and my Queen.”

“It’s an honor to lead you into Westeros, Queen Daenerys,” Margaery Stark says with a smile. They look a King and Queen from a song, young and beautiful, and Daenerys didn’t realize people like that actually existed.

Her husband isn’t done with introductions. “On my right are my youngest sister Princess Arya and my oldest brother and heir Prince Jon.” The girl’s hair is short and messy like a young boy’s and just as terrible at hiding her discomfort at the title as her brother is. “On my left are my younger sister Princess Sansa and her husband Prince Theon, and Margaery’s brother Ser Loras, Knight of the Flowers.”

Either noblemen in Westeros don’t have others make introductions for them and Ser Jorah neglected to tell her, or the Starks do things differently. Before she can go to introduce those with her as apparently that’s custom here, the pretty redhead says, “ _Ser Barristan?_ ” in the most incredulous voice Daenerys has heard used in a while.

With a smile of his own, Ser Barristan says, “It’s good to see you’ve escaped King’s Landing, Princess Sansa. You look well. And you, Princess Arya.”

“This is Ser Barristan?” King Robb says, looking from his sister to him. “You went across the Narrow Sea when Joffrey forced your resignation?”

“There were some wrongs that needed to be made right.”

Before they can continue, as Ser Barristan can speak with the princesses later to see how they are, Daenerys says, “This is Ser Jorah, also of Westeros, of House Mormont in the North.”

Prince Jon glances at the sword at his side before looking up at Ser Jorah. “Your father is at the Wall,” he says, “but there are lords of your House here.”

Though she knows he’s still apprehensive about his family, Ser Jorah thanks them. “With me are also Missandei of Astapor and Grey Worm, leader of the Unsullied, and Daario Naharis of the Second Sons,” she continues.  “My army numbers ten thousand men of Unsullied and the Second Sons.”

“With the combined forces of the Reach, the Riverlands, and the North,” King Robb says, “our army numbers at a little over one hundred thousand. We have two hundred warships at our disposal.”

When Ser Barristan mentioned the North’s large numbers, he said the largest force they could call was one of forty-five thousand. He said Robb Stark was going to need her for sea power.

He said—

Well, Daenerys thinks she might have just made the best alliance possible.

 

 

Ros returns to King’s Landing at midday and Cersei receives her in her room, Jaime getting her in at a time no spies are near. “It was them, Your Grace,” the girl says, looking much more afraid than last time. “Lord Baelish—he kissed me. Lady Arryn saw, accused him of doing so because I have hair the color of Lady Catelyn, and started raving about all she had given to him. She said she put ‘the tears’ in her husband’s wine and then wrote to Catelyn saying the Lannisters did it. Then he threw her out the Moon Door. He’s blaming someone else, her personal singer. He hadn’t known I was there.”

Her brother looks at her sharply from over Ros’ shoulders. “You did well,” Cersei says, already reaching for paper and quill. “Jaime, stay by her for the rest of the day. Anyone who pursued her may have entered King’s Landing as well.”

“Of course, Your Grace.”

“We have reports putting the Starks in Tarth,” she says. “You’ll be given gold and protection to get there. You’re from Winterfell, I’m sure you know what your lords look like.” Looking to her brother, she adds, “I’m not putting you anywhere near Robb Stark again, so it seems I’ll be calling up Tyrion’s delightful friend’s services again. Go find him. Don’t find me until you have.”

As she stands to leave, Ros asks, “What’s to be done about Lord Baelish, Your Grace?”

A lot of things a silly girl doesn’t need to know about. “Oh, his wife was just murdered,” Cersei answers, tone mild. “King’s Landing is preparing for siege. Lord Baelish will have to come to us rather than us sending someone to him.”

And perhaps Ros isn’t as silly as Cersei first thought, because a knowing smile slides across her face, cunning and harsh.

 

 

“Did she really think she’d be able to take King’s Landing with ten thousand men?”

Robb shoves his arm lightly. “The Unsullied are supposed to be the best soldiers in the world.”

Even he says it with a certain layer of skepticism, though. Jon watches Queen Daenerys talk to the man whose sword he wears at his side. “How many of them do you think have fought an actual battle?” he asks. “Not the Second Sons, them I don’t doubt. But taking King’s Landing isn’t going to be like anything they’ve ever done before.”

“I know. Casterly Rock is going to be a child’s game in comparison for us, too,” Robb answers with a sigh. “Still, she delayed coming here to free a city of slaves. I don’t know if she’ll be a smart queen, but she’ll be a kind one. She said she’d leave Tywin and Joffrey to us, too.”

“What are we going to do about the Queen and her brothers?”

Ser Barristan goes and joins Jorah and Queen Daenerys and how he thought she could win with those numbers is the biggest mystery of all. Even dragons can be killed, though it’s hard and it’s better ally with them than be opposed. “I’m not killing anyone who helped Sansa,” Robb says. “With Jaime…well, I suppose you can’t help who you’re related to. With Joffrey and their father dead, they can return to Casterly Rock—if the new Queen permits it, of course.”

Before Jon can answer, Theon’s voice calls out, “R—Your Grace, news from King’s Landing!” and then he’s here with Ros, the whore from Winterfell, and the man who delivered Sansa with him. Daenerys and her advisors look towards them. “Ros says it’s urgent. Ser Bronn here is just continuing his role of redhead delivery service.”

Tipping his head forward slightly, Ser Bronn says, “Just doing my duty, Your Grace.”

“Thank you?” Robb answers, clearly as confused as Jon feels. “Ros, what’s happened?”

“The Queen said I’m to give the message only to you, Your Grace,” she says and last time she and Jon saw each other, Theon bought her for the night because it was such a shame that he’d have to go celibate at the Wall. This wasn’t a reunion he was expecting in the middle of war.

Robb has Theon find Bronn a place to rest in order for them to be alone (they don’t make it far before Sansa gets to them), but doesn’t order Jon away. As she’s from Winterfell herself, Ros doesn’t even think to press that the Queen said alone, and gives her message in a rush. “The Queen is having him called to King’s Landing for your aunt’s murder, Your Grace,” Ros says when she’s finished, “and she knows you’re coming.”

Whatever has been keeping his brother together the past few weeks is starting to crack at the news and it actually makes Jon angry that the timing was probably an accident on the Lannisters’ part. “Thank you for your help,” Robb says, but his smile is more forced than it was before she came. “Jon can you go—find her lodging?”

Jon finds Ros, who asks if his brother is all right because whore or not, she’s from Winterfell, lodging with Lady Brienne, before going off to find Arya and Margaery to inform them Lysa Arryn helped start this war.

 

 

On the night before the attack on King’s Landing, Margaery pulls her husband down for a kiss. “Come back to me,” she tells him, which she never would have to Renly. “Promise me you will do whatever it takes to come back.”

“I swear I will, Margaery. I’ll swear on whatever you want me to,” he answers, pressing their foreheads together. “I love you, you hear me? I have no intention of leaving you.”

His hair is soft as bird feathers between her fingers. “I love you, Robb,” she says, and is no longer surprised that she means it. “Swear to me that you’ll come back on the life of your child.”

He pulls away from her. “Life of my—” he starts, but pauses. “Are you—”

With a nod, she says, “See, you _have_ to return.”

Bring him back to me in safety, she prays to gods old and new as he kisses her again, mouth turned into a smile. Please, if you are merciful, don’t allow this child to grow up without a father.

“I love you.”

_Please._

 

 

They come with dragons and ships and soldiers and familiarity of fighting in darkness without fire to light the way. Cersei is stuck downstairs with her flock of frightened hens, her children, and Ilyn Payne before the Starks breech the Red Keep and Jon Snow stabs the man through the back.

“My family,” she says, standing, as the boy reassures Mycella he’s not here to hurt any of them. “Jaime, Joffrey, Tyrion—where are they?”

“Your brothers are safe. The men were ordered not to harm them, you, or your younger children,” he answers, and Tyrion’s whore stands, too, no longer reaching for her knife. “Your father is captured and your son…”

When Jon Snow trails off, Cersei already knows the answers, but the word “What?” slips out anyway.

Glancing at her children, he says, “Maybe it’s best Robb tells you. We’ve taken the city. And Daenerys Targaryen. All we need is for the current Queen to surrender.”

Despite every instinct her father ingrained into her screaming at her not to, Cersei is simply too tired to refuse. Her son is dead, she doesn’t need words to say that, and Father is to be executed, but the Starks have kept the rest of them alive. “I will keep them safe, Your Grace,” Tyrion’s woman says, drawing her knife. “No one will hurt your children.”

Jon Snow, or Jon Stark, or whoever he is now, leads her away to the throne room. Her oldest son is dead and her life is over, but she’s too numb from shock to care.

 

 

Robb executes Tywin Lannister himself, but doesn’t do it publicly for the sake for his family. Though Lady Cersei and her children hadn’t seen, Ser Jaime already had to watch Sansa’s direwolf tear out his oldest son’s throat. Regardless of the circumstance under which Joffrey was conceived, that was undoubtedly painful.

In the end, this is why he allows the other man to win their argument and execute Petyr Baelish, much to the confusion of the public, because the crime he coerced Aunt Lysa into committing affected both their Houses. After, Daenerys is declared the new Queen of Westeros, and already has plans on what to do with a kingdom that doesn’t include the North.

Before she can decide what to do with the Lannisters, Robb takes her aside and says quite plainly, one ruler to another, “Keep Lord Tyrion as Master of Coin, if he’ll have the position. He understands money and Westeros better than any you brought with you. The Vale needs new leadership—perhaps instead of stripping his siblings of their power, give them positions there or back at Casterly Rock.”

Queen Daenerys frowns. “Their way of rule was corrupt, it was why you allied with me to begin with,” she says. “Lord Tyrion I can understand, but you want me to give Cersei and Jaime back their land?”

"They can’t rule a country. That doesn’t mean they can’t help govern a single land,” he answers, too exhausted to explain his point further about how appointing Lysa’s son as Lord of the Eyrie would be a terrible decision and anyway, since the North now stretches down to the Trident, it will be easier for the land on either side to be governed by someone both he and Queen Daenerys can trust. “If you refuse, I’m offering them asylum in the North.”

As generous and kind as Queen Daenerys is, she refuses, which means she’s still naïve about how land division works here. But she’ll learn soon enough—she has to, and she seems a quick learner anyway. Even so, he can’t very well strand the woman who shielded his little sister from her own son, so he goes to Cersei a few hours later while she’s speaking with Sansa and politely requests to talk to her alone. “I’ve stripped the remaining Boltons of all lands and titles,” he tells her, exhausted by now but no longer bloody. “You’re a violent House, there’s no denying it, and so were they, but I want Dreadfort redesigned—no more torture, a new sigil, new words. As we’re now separate nations, you can even keep your sigil as a lion. You protected my sister and you love your children. Maybe what the city needs now is a mother, not a torturer.”

Cersei’s face is blank the entire time he speaks. “Your family killed my son and my father,” she says, “and my family killed your parents and hurt your sisters and you still offer me asylum in the North?”

“If you would have it. My people adore Sansa and she hasn’t kept it a secret what you did for her.”

After a moment, she says, “Let me speak to my brothers and children first,” and sounds as tired as he does. “I’m not creative enough to think up House words on my own.”

“Find me when you’re ready, Lady Cersei,” he tells her. “We leave in a week. I know it means nothing, but I’m sorry about your father and son.”

She does nothing when he turns to leave, but when he gets to the door, she suddenly asks, “Did my warning reach you in time?”

He pauses. “No.”

“I’m sorry about your mother…Your Grace,” she says, and he leaves.

 

 

Dreadfort becomes Lannisfort and as they’re separate countries now, the Lannisters keep their House name, but their sigil becomes a lioness instead of a lion, which Arya loves.  Jaime writes the new words, not Cersei, and they read, _Not for glory, but for life._ Robb thinks there’s more to the Kingslayer story than he thought.

He doesn’t ask.

 

 

By the time they return to Winterfell, Sansa is also with child and Margaery is three months pregnant.

“This is Bran,” Robb says, holding his gangly twelve-year-old brother in his arms, “and this is Rickon. Bran, Rickon, this is my wife Margaery.”

Young Bran’s brow furrows when he looks at her. “You’re shivering,” he says, and the snow sticks to Robb’s eyelashes.

“Well, the Reach is much warmer than it is here,” she answers, and pulls the furs tighter around herself. “I’ll get used to it soon, I’m sure.”

Rickon stares up at her with wide eyes and behind him, Arya is spinning around in the snow with Jon and Ros as if they hadn’t just returned from a two year war. Sansa is speaking with some girl from Winterfell, her hand tucked in Theon’s, who becomes a completely different person the moment they’re together. Because they’re the Greyjoys of Winterfell, they’re now the Winterjoys, and Margaery hopes that’s a good sign for years to come.

“You’re really pretty,” says the little boy and she smiles and thanks him. “Do you like lemon cake?”

“What type of Queen in the North would I be if I didn’t?” she answers, and Rickon takes her hand. “Oh, where are we going?”

With a laugh, Robb says, “To the hall, I imagine. Our celebrations might not be as grand as the in the south, but the royal family did just return. Just follow my brother, he’ll show you the way.”

“You’re not coming?”

He leans down to give her a kiss. “In a minute, Margaery,” he says, and she allows herself to be lead away.

 

 

The wight walkers come from beyond the Wall; Queen Daenerys sends a dragon and the Reach sends some men and they defeat the threat in the earliest stages of winter. Next comes the wildlings, but apparently the absent Benjen Stark had infiltrated the camp for all these years and destroyed the operation from the inside, taking out the King Beyond the Wall himself, so that threat is over and done with quickly, too.

Benjen comes after the birth of Eddard Stark, and stays for the birth of Catelyn Winterjoy. Asha appears not long after despite the weather, no others from the Iron Islands in tow, and Theon doesn’t know how to receive her.

“I might not have seen you since you were eight,” she says, standing next to him as he watches Sansa and Margaery coddle their children, “but that’s still my nephew and you’re still my brother. Why Catelyn?”

Of course, Asha doesn’t understand because Father didn’t even want her to come. They still see him as a hostage situation, but he was always more than that. “Tywin Lannister had her killed at my wife’s wedding,” he answers with a shrug. “We thought another Cat should get a chance at a life that won’t murder. Is this the last I’m going to see of you?”

"Is this is last you _want_ to see of me?”

Again, he shrugs. “You’re my sister.” She can take that as it likes.

“When winter ends,” she tells him. “I’ll come again for whatever his name day is.”

Robb walks from a side door and sits by his wife and sister, looking tired and stressed but handling it well enough, and takes his little girl in his arms. He’s nineteen now and looks nothing like his father.

Though Theon will never say it, he thinks he finally understands why Frey called him a bastard king.

 

 

“Remember when we were children and wandered into the godswood because I was afraid of the story of the blue-eyed giant?”

It’s much too early in the morning for normal people to be awake, but Lyanna, his month-old daughter, just broke her fever and though he’s better at controlling his moods, Robb isn’t perfect. Jon shouldn’t be up, either, but he’s twenty-one and worries just as terribly as he did at eleven. “Yes,” he answers, leaning his head against the window and watching yet another snowfall. “Father chided us for getting so dirty.”

“He was nothing compared to Mother, though.”

“No, no one could compare to her when it came to her children and dirt.”

They share tired smiles. Though Robb might not be able to sleep, Jon can if he’d like. “You don’t need to stay awake for me.”

But he thinks he does, of course, because he’s an older brother and according to him, older brothers are always right. “Robb,” he says, “you’re a great king. You’re so good at taking care of everyone. When are you going to learn to take care of yourself?”

This isn’t a discussion Robb wants to have, but he knew it would come up eventually. Since winter came and they returned, Jon hasn’t had the time to tell him off. “I’ve been trying for ten years now, Jon,” he says. “As long as I don’t get myself killed, I don’t think there’s much of a problem.”

Suddenly his brother reaches over and pulls him into a hug like he used to when Robb would forget to breathe. Jon doesn’t say anything, but he can hear clearly anyway, _that’s not good enough._

He grips tightly back and reminds himself that his family is finally safe. And if it feels like a lie, it doesn’t matter, because he can still make it true.

* * *

 

* * *

 


End file.
